THE BOOKS OF THE WEATHER BIRD PRESS
Vance Gerry
Interviewed by Rebecca Ziegler
Completed under the auspices
of the
Oral History Program
University of California
Los Angeles
Copyright © 1992
The Regents of the University of California
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CONTENTS
Biographical Summary vi
Interview History ix
TAPE NUMBER: I, Side One (April 20, 1989) 1
Schooling — Teachers at Chouinard Art Institute--
Working for Grant Dahlstrom at Castle Press- -
Scott E. Hasel ton- -House Olson--Clyde Browne--
Plans to become an illustrator fall through--
Begins working at Walt Disney Studio.
TAPE NUMBER: 1, Side Two (April 20, 1989) 26
Gerry's various printshops- -Books he has printed--
Herb Yellin and the Lord John Press--Gerry ' s
favorites among the books he has printed.
TAPE NUMBER: II, Side One (April 20, 1989) 50
More on Gerry's books- -Bahloul and Hamdouna--
Miniature books- -Woodcut and illustrations--
Checklist of Gerry's publications.
TAPE NUMBER: III, Side One (May 4, 1989) 72
More on Gerry's books--Rounce and Coffin Club--
Maps--More on miniature books.
TAPE NUMBER: III, Side Two (May 4, 1989) 99
More books--Production etching--Platen jobbers--
Bookbindinq- -Weather Bird — Books he never
completed- -Books he plans for the future--
Partnership with Patrick Reagh — Favorite
typefaces.
TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side One (May 4, 1989) 125
More on typefaces- -Choosing paper--Layout--
Illustrating--Binding .
TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side Two (May 4, 1989) 150
Bela Blau — Mel Kavin and Kater Craft binders —
Gerry's commercial printing.
XV
TAPE NUMBER: V, Side One (May 18, 1989) 156
Printers Gerry admires — The Western Books
Exhibition — Los Angeles printers — Pasadena
printers--Los Angeles booksellers.
TAPE NUMBER: V, Side Two (May 18, 1989) 182
Jake Zeitlin — The Clark Library — Printing in
Pasadena--The economics of running a small press--
The future of printing.
TAPE NUMBER: VI, Side One (May 18, 1989) 206
More on the binding process- -The various media
Gerry has worked in--Stenciling--The California
watercolorists--Watercolor as a medium- -Favorite
artists and illustrators--Working at Disney.
TAPE NUMBER: VI, Side Two (May 18, 1989) 231
Various positions at Disney--Films he has worked
on--Winnie-the-Pooh .
Index 246
Index of Books Designed and/or Printed by Vance Gerry... 251
BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
PERSONAL HISTORY:
Bom: August 21, 1929, Pasadena, California.
Education: Woodbury College; Art Center School;
Chouinard Art Institute.
Military service: Corporal, United States Army, 1951-
52.
Spouse: Mary Palmer Gerry.
CAREER HISTORY:
Apprentice printer. Castle Press, 1943.
Layout man, story sketch artist, Walt Disney Studio,
1955-present.
Owner, Weather Bird Press, 1968-present.
Printer, Patrick Reagh Printers, Glendale, California,
1980-81.
SELECTED BOOKS DESIGNED AND/OR PRINTED BY:
Some Fond Remembrances of a Boy Printer at the Castle
Press (1968).
The Marvelous Platen Jobber of George Phineas Gordon
(1968).
The Ernest A. Lindner Collection of Antique Printing
Machinery (1971).
A Picture Book of Chickens (1972).
The Everyday Gourmet, Dan and Betty Bailey (1973).
Bibliography of Cheney Miniatures (1975).
Distributing Type or the Just Art of Throwing In (1975)
Special Recipes for Special People, Vera Ricci (1976).
VI
A Tussle Mussie, Louise Seymour Jones (1976).
Grant Dahlstrom, Master Printer; A Tribute on His
Seventy-fifth Birthday (1977).
Four Common Plants ; Linoleum Cuts and the Text
Describing Oleander, Plumbago, Wild Cucumber, and Yarrow
(1978).
Grant Dahlstrom at Seventy-five: More Tributes (1978).
Letters concerning D. H. Lawrence (1978).
The Day the Pig Fell in the Well, John Cheever ( 1978 ) .
A Treatise on the Art and Antiquity of Cookery in the
Middle Ages, Rochelle Lucky (1978).
Out of the West; Poems by William Everson, Gary Snyder,
Philip Levine, Clayton Eshleman, and Jerome Rothenberg
(1979).
Designs Cut for Plantin Press Calendars, 1941 to 1946,
Marion Kronfeld (1980).
Miniatures on Modern Artists; Some Notes (1980).
Topography of the Castle Press, circa 1943, and Other
Dim Recollections (1980).
Under Three Inches (1981).
House Olson, Printer, David W. Davies (1983).
Selected War Poems of Wilfred Owen (1983).
Four Weeds (1984).
The Standing and the Waiting, M. F. K. Fisher (1985).
On the Illustrating of Books, Edward Ardizzone (1986).
The San Pasqual Press; A Dream Nearly Realized (1986).
Goodbye, E. G. Lindner Company (1990).
Hearty Fare (1990).
Madeleine, Lawrence Clark Powell (1990).
Vll
FILMS WORKED ON AT WALT DISNEY STUDIO:
Sleeping Beauty (1959).
101 Dalmatians (1961).
The Sword in the Stone (1963).
Winnie-the-Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966).
The Jungle Book (1967).
Winnie-the-Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968)
The Aristocats (1970).
Robin Hood (1973).
The Rescuers (1977).
The Fox and the Hound (1981).
The Black Cauldron (1985).
The Great Mouse Detective (1986).
Oliver (1988).
The Prince and the Pauper (1990).
Beauty and the Beast (1991).
AFFILIATIONS:
Rounce and Coffin Club.
Vlll
INTERVIEW HISTORY
INTERVIEWER:
Rebecca Ziegler, Gold Shield Intern, UCLA Oral History
Program. B.A., History of Religions, University of
Chicago; M.A., Folklore, UCLA; Ph.D., individual
program, UCLA; M.L.S., UCLA.
TIME AND SETTING OF INTERVIEW:
Place: Tapes I and II, Powell Library, UCLA; tape III,
University Research Library, UCLA.
Dates, length of sessions: April 20, 1989 (102
minutes); May 4, 1989 (144); May 18, 1989 (160).
Total number of recorded hours: 6.75
Persons present during interview: Gerry and Ziegler.
CONDUCT OF INTERVIEW:
In preparing for the interview, Ziegler reviewed the
Weather Bird Press collection at UCLA's William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library. The collection contains books
and other items printed by Gerry, as well as the proof
sheets, correspondence, sketches, and financial records
related to his various printing jobs.
The interview is organized chronologically, beginning
with Gerry's schooling, early work experiences, and
subsequent career at Walt Disney Studio, and continuing
on through his career as a printer. Major topics
discussed include the books that Gerry has printed, his
ideas on book design and illustration, other printers
and bookmen in Los Angeles, and Gerry's work at Disney
Studio.
EDITING:
Lisa White, editorial assistant, edited the interview.
She checked the verbatim transcript of the interview
against the original tape recordings, edited for
punctuation, paragraphing, and spelling, and verified
proper names. Words and phrases inserted by the editor
have been bracketed.
IX
Gerry reviewed the transcript. He verified proper names
and made minor corrections and additions.
Teresa Barnett, senior editor, prepared the table of
contents and index. Rebecca Stone, editorial assistant,
prepared the biographical summary and interview history.
SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS:
The original tape recordings of the interview are in the
university archives and are available under the
regulations governing the use of permanent noncurrent
records of the university. Records relating to the
interview are located in the office of the UCLA Oral
History Program.
Gerry's papers are deposited at the William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library, and are listed as Press Coll
Weather Bird, Gerry, Archives of the Weather Bird Press
1967 to 1987.
X
TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
APRIL 20, 1989
ZIEGLER: I'm sitting here in Powell Library in Lawrence
Clark Powell's former office and I'm interviewing Vance
Gerry. So are we ready to begin?
GERRY: Yes, indeed we are.
ZIEGLER: First, could you tell me a little bit about when
and where you were born and where you grew up?
GERRY: Yes. I was born in Pasadena--I still live there--
almost sixty years ago.
ZIEBLER: Have you lived there all your life?
GERRY: Off and on for most of my life, yes, I've lived in
Pasadena.
ZIEGLER: What schools did you attend?
GERRY: I went to Luther Burbank Grammar School, Thomas
Jefferson Grammar School, and then we moved to Altadena
from Pasadena. We lived there for the next twenty years, I
guess. And I went to Elliot Junior High School, Charles W.
Elliot Junior High School in Altadena. And then — I was a
very bad student — a very poor student — and I went through
high school at a little school for those who weren't smart
enough to make it through public school called University
School, which was in Pasadena. That's how I managed to get
through high school .
ZIEGLER: Where did you go then?
GERRY: Well, as I said, I was a pretty bad student, and
the only thing I'd ever shown any talent in was a little
bit of artwork. Teachers usually liked my artwork in
grammar school, watercolors and crayons and so on. So I
had sort of always thought that I would be a commercial
artist. So when it came time to go to college--which my
father [Francis B. Gerry], of course, wanted me to do
although I was ill-prepared--! chose art school, because I
thought it would be easy and because I could qualify and
get in, whereas in a regular college I probably could never
have gotten in. But he went along with that, and I went to
a place that's still going called Woodbury College. This
was right about at the end of the war and it was filled
with GI students, and they had expanded their facilities to
accommodate them.
ZIEGLER: Where's that located?
GERRY: It was on Wilshire Boulevard near Figueroa [Street]
at that time. I don't know where it is now. It may still
be there. And they had a commercial art department, which
was not very good I don't think at that time. But I was
pretty young. I wasn't twenty years old when I started at
Woodbury. And it was probably- -because I was so young- -
better to go there than one of the better art schools when
I was only that age.
Later on I went to Art Center [School], which was then
way out on Third Street. An old girls school. I went
there for a semester and I was drafted. After the Korean
War I went to Chouinard [Art Institute] , and that was the
best school. I went there when they were at the very peak
of their ability as an art school, I would say. The
teachers and Mrs. [Nelbert Murphy] Chouinard, who had made
the school, were still all there and in their prime, and I
was lucky enough to be there. Although, at the time, I
didn't really realize-- It was later on, when I look
back. So I got a pretty good art school education, if not
any other kind.
ZIEGLER: Well, later on we'd like to talk a little more
about Chouinard, but could you just mention some of the
teachers you had there?
GERRY: Yes. I think the most influential teacher I had
was a man named Don [Donald W.] Graham, who taught drawing
and composition. He taught from an entirely different
point of view than most other teachers. He always talked
about something you didn't understand. And he would either
drive you nuts or you fell in love with him. He really
went after the very hard, difficult things of art — if you
want to say art--and to get students to do these difficult
things rather than just copying or whatever, which most of
the teachers would settle for. And he was a very-- I never
saw any of the artwork he'd ever done himself, but he was.
I guess, a man who was born to be teacher. He knew art
very well, backwards and forwards, and he could teach it.
So I learned a lot from him.
Then there was a man named William Moore, who was — I
think he was an interior designer by profession, but he
taught color and design and he was a magnificent teacher.
He had a system that was sort of based on cubism, although
he never used the word nor did he want you to use the
word. But a lot of it was based on cubism, and he had a
system of understanding colors and making designs. He
never wanted you to draw with the pencil. You always had
to paint the color you wanted on a piece of paper and then
cut it out and paste these pieces of paper into some sort
of design. It was really very, very instructional. I
learned a great deal from him.
ZIEGLER: So that was good training for a book layout.
GERRY: I suppose so, yes. Of course, I had had some
interest all the time in art school in layout and
advertising, but I never took that. I wanted to be an
illustrator, a magazine illustrator. So I wasn't really
ever-- Although I was still interested in printing and
designing and that sort of thing- -and I did take some
advertising courses--my prime interest was illustration.
ZIEGLER: I was wondering-- The name Don Graham rings a
bell in something I was reading about [Walt] Disney
[Studio], Didn't he give classes at Disney later on?
GERRY: Right. Not later on — I think it was earlier. I
think when Walt Disney wanted to do Snow White, he felt
that his people were not adequately schooled in drawing.
They were more like people who had come along and picked up
animation, and were not really very good draftsmen. They
could move things around and be funny, but they couldn't
draw very well. And he felt that they weren't going to be
able to make Snow White unless he had some of his artists
better trained. So he hired Don Graham from the Chouinard
Art School to teach his people part-time. This was, I
think, in the early thirties. This might have been as
early as 1931 or '32, I believe. And Don Graham himself
told me that it was an amazing thing for him to be thrown
into this cartoon world. He himself had been steeped in
the traditions of the Renaissance. That's what he loved,
the Renaissance masters--at that time, anyway--and here he
was in the world of animated cartoons! And he said he had
learned more from them, probably, than they learned from
him. [laughter]
ZIEGLER: What would you say was his influence on the style
of Disney Studios? Actually, we're sort of skipping all
over the place, but--
GERRY: I really don't know because I was never in one of
his classes at Disney. When I arrived at Disney in 1955 he
was writing a book, which later came out much edited,
called the Art of Animation. That came out around ' 57 or
'58, and he was at the studio at that time part-time,
working on the book in a room he had there where he had
access to all of the Disney material. What was the rest of
that question?
ZIEGLER: Well, I was saying we're sort of jumping ahead,
and maybe we can go back to your childhood and growing up
years and so forth, and then talk more about Don Graham and
Chouinard later.
GERRY : Okay .
ZEIGLER: Could you tell me some about your early
experiences with books? Maybe things that first got you
interested in books as works of art, and considerations of
illustration, layout, design, all that.
GERRY: I can't remember that I-- We always read. My
mother [Clella White Gerry] always took me to the
library. She always read; I always read. Although mostly
always just novels. She liked movies and novels, and we
were always at the library. But more, like I say, for
purposes of entertainment. So the library was not a
mystery to me. I was never frightened. In fact, I still
feel more comfortable in a library than perhaps anywhere
else. [laughter]
ZIEGLER: Well, I'm delighted to hear that.
GERRY: I learned to read in spite of being a bad student,
but I had no interest in a book as a manufactured object of
art. It wasn't until I worked for Grant Dahlstrom that I
began to see-- He would point out things about books. And
even though I wasn't interested in printing a book at the
time I worked for him, I think his influences were probably
all stored away in my mind, and when I did get interested I
could draw on those experiences and what he had taught me--
I mean, without teaching. It was a work situation; he was
not a teacher. It was just what you picked up. He was a
book-oriented printer, I would say. Even though he would
do a lot of commercial work, his printing instincts were
from the book rather than from the advertising world.
ZIEGLER: Do you remember some specific instances when he
showed you about layout? Or when he was working on
something and it struck you, and you think in retrospect
that it influenced you?
GERRY: Well, I got to be interested in printing when I
worked for him. Although I had gone to work for him
because I needed some money. This was during the war, and
young people could get jobs because everybody was off
fighting the war. The men weren't home, so boys could get
jobs. And I could have the money which my father wasn't
going to give me. I mean, no one's father gave them money
in those days. The only way you got money was by working
for it.
So I got a job with Grant because I'd had a little
printing experience. I had a friend in junior high school
who worked in a local print shop, and he said, "Well, you
could make money. You could make $8 or $10 a week in your
part-time." That sounded very good to me, because there
were a number of things I wanted. There was a certain kind
of toy that I was trying to collect, and they were all
terribly expensive and I never had any money. So when I
went to work for Grant-- I mean, when I took my first
paycheck I was so excited I took it to the store to buy
this object I'd wanted. I can't remember what happened
right now--it was either sold or it was broken or something
had happened. But I had the money, so I had to spend it.
So I bought a little toy printing press which I took back
and showed to Grant.
ZIEGLER: Did it actually work? Could you print things on
it?
GERRY: Oh, yes, it was a real printing press. It had
metal type and it was a small platen press.
ZIEGLER: About how big was it?
GERRY: I guess the inside of the chase was 3" X 5". And I
think he was a little astounded that he had so influenced
me in a couple of weeks that I'd gone out and bought a
printing press. But, anyway, I took it home and I began
8
to — He was throwing out a lot of type that he had
inherited from the previous owners that he didn't like, and
he would sell it to me for the scrap metal price. So I was
busily getting some after-hours, setting up some type that
he didn't want. And I took it home. I was printing at
home in my bedroom. Scott [E.] Haselton, a publisher who
shared the building with Grant, used to call me the
"bedroom printer, " and he thought that was terribly
amusing. I guess I was about fourteen, fifteen years
old. And so whatever I printed, of course, I would bring
it in and show Grant, and he would criticize it. So that
was the way-- Probably his criticism of my work is the only
example I can think of--
ZIEGLER: What were some of those early things you printed?
GERRY: Oh, I suppose some silly, ephemeral things. I
can't even remember. But he would always say, "Don't use
so many kinds of type. Don't put so much ink on. Try not
to have it going all over." The standard things that a
person would tell you. I mean, they weren't standard--they
were better than standard. That was the only time I could
think of where he directly influenced the way I would
work. Because in the shop the boys were not in any
creative capacity. We swept the floor or we washed the
presses, or we might run the little jobbing press and print
business cards and things like that, that he didn't want to
waste anybody else's time doing.
ZIEGLER: And also distributing type. You have an amusing
little essay on that.
GERRY: Oh, yes. I also was distributing type, right.
That was a long and arduous job, getting rid of all the
type that had been set and used. It had to be all put back
in the cases, and it was very tedious and tiring.
Actually, anything I did that was creative from Grant
Dahlstrom was kind of picked up on the sidelines. Because
I didn't do creative work for him. So it was just sort of
like he would say, "Here's an example of something that
looks pretty good." Or "Why did they ruin this? Look what
this guy did to this! He put all these ornaments on here,
and he didn't need those." But, like I say, I must have
picked this up indirectly, because I wasn't that interested
in printing. I was going to go to art school I kept
telling everybody, which of course I later on did.
ZIEGLER: So you didn't think at that time you might be a
printer yourself eventually?
GERRY: No, no. It wasn't going to be my employment when I
grew up. I was not going to be a printer, no. I mean, it
was terrible. It was a lot of work, and it was dirty,
[laughter] But I guess I did learn, because from then on,
after I left Grant-- And, of course, we had contact until
he died. For the next thirty years, I suppose, we got
10
together and I would show him things I did. He kind of
came to appreciate me as a printer. I mean, for a long
time he thought I was just, you know, doing terrible
things. But later on, from listening to him and taking his
comments, I got to where he almost liked some of my
things! [laughter]
ZIEGLER: Well, you may be overstating the case, but could
you tell me about some of his early criticisms of your
printing? And then some of the things he really liked?
GERRY: Well, I don't think he ever came out and said he
really liked anything. But he did compliment my presswork
on a cookbook I did.
ZIEGLER: Which was that?
GERRY: That was called Recipes for-- Gosh, I can't
remember. It was by-- I can't even remember the author.
ZIEGLER: Special Recipes for Special People.
GERRY: It was a little recipe book I printed out. I
printed it out on a hand cylinder press, and it was very
good presswork. I did a lot of tedious makeready and it
came out pretty good. Vera Ricci was the author.
ZIEGLER: Yes, I saw it at the Clark Library.
GERRY: Maybe it wasn't really praise. It was just that he
didn't throw it all out or tear it up or jump all over it
for being wrong that I took to be praise. [laughter] But
most of his criticisms were "Don't use so many kinds of
11
type." Also, very frequently he would point to others of
his contemporaries and he would say, "Look at what he
did! He did this wrong." Or "Why did he do this?" Or
"Why did he put this type down here? Why did he use such
small type?" Things that he personally didn't like as far
as design goes.
ZIEGLER: So his style was very simple and elegant?
GERRY: Yeah. I don't know elegant, but it was simple. He
went for simplicity and underplayed everything pretty
much. That was the sort of man he was. He dressed in a
very underplayed sort of way and was a very modest man,
with modified speech. He very properly and carefully
learned the English language and was a big stickler for the
English language in terms of printing, how it applied, and
had all sorts of various books on the subject. Well, I
can't think right off of everything about Grant.
ZIEGLER: We'll maybe talk more about him later, and of
course anything that you think of along the way we'd be
glad to have here on the tape. Who were some of the other
people that worked at the Castle Press while you were
there?
GERRY: I mentioned Scott Haselton, who had quite a history
in printing. There's a book on him published by Dawson's
[Book Shop], I think, and printed by Pat [Patrick] Reagh, I
believe, which is a little short biography [Scott E.
12
Haselton and His Abbey Garden Press by David W. Davies] .
He owned the building. He had his own plant there. He and
Grant shared the building, and they each had their own
printing plant within the building. And they shared each
other's equipment, also.
Haselton printed the Cactus and Succulent Journal. In
fact, he may have founded the magazine. He had lived in
the desert, because he had been gassed in the First World
War and he had come to the desert to live. The doctors
thought that would be better for him. And that's where he
got interested in cactus and succulents. So he got into
printing and moved out of the desert into L.A. , and by
various means he learned to be a printer and got interested
in publishing. He published quite a number of books on the
subject of cactus and succulents.
He'd been associated with the early printer in
Garvanza [area of Los Angeles] , whose name I should
remember- -Clyde Browne. He had worked with Browne and
another woman who worked there by the name of Helen
Sloan. She had worked for Clyde Browne. She'd done her
apprenticeship with him in Clyde Browne's Abbey of San
Encino Press. I believe that's what it was called. She'd
learned Linotype from him, and she was primarily a Linotype
operator. But she did a lot of makeup, and she did some
small platen press work. I learned all the particulars of
13
printing from her. You know, the actual setting and
distributing of it. The tedious tasks of printing I
learned from her, whereas Grant spent most of his time
setting the type by hand. Hand-setting the type or in his
office or out selling. He never went out and ran a press
or anything like that.
ZIEGLER: How much of what they did at Castle Press was
hand- set and how much was done on the Linotype?
GERRY: I'd say anything that had more than two or three
lines was set on a Linotype. Mostly just the display type
was set by hand and headings and that sort of thing. But
never any text. That was all done on the Linotype. Either
by their own machine, which belonged to Scott and Grant
merely rented time on it, or whether it was done by a trade
typesetter. It was mostly all done on Linotype.
ZIEGLER: Would you like to say more about how Scott
Haselton and Helen Sloan and these other people influenced
you, then, in how you eventually became a printer yourself?
GERRY: Well, I would guess it would be more like I didn't
know I was being taught. I didn't know I was learning
anything while I was there. It was just a job. But then
later on when I wanted to print myself, I followed how they
did it. That was the way I'd learned, and I suppose
someone else would do it a different way. But I pretty
much started printing the way we had done it at the Castle
14
Press. And the way Haselton had done it. I wanted to get
a Linotype and press like his, because I always thought he
had a really good thing going for him. Not that he made
any money, but he had this magazine, plus his other books
he published, and he did everything except the press and
the typesetting. Helen would set the type, and then he
would make up the pages on the stone himself and get it all
locked up and in the press. The pressman would run off the
magazine. Then Scott would run it through the folder.
He'd trim it, he'd stitch it, he'd package it, and then
he'd mail it, all there in his shirt and tie. And I
thought, "What a nice job. What a nice man. What a nice
way to live your life." But I never achieved that.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, that was entirely his own product.
GERRY: Right. Grant always said that he made a lot of
money, but I can't believe it.
ZIEGLER: Do you happen to know what the circulation was of
the Cactus and Succulent Journal? Or approximately?
GERRY: Well, I'm just trying to remember the piles of the
magazines. I suppose it was probably a little more than a
thousand worldwide. But that's a guess. I think it's
still being published in Santa Barbara.
ZIEGLER: Was it mainly about raising cacti? Or was it, I
don't know, about seeing cacti in the desert?
GERRY: It had photographs in it. I was not at any time
15
interested in cactus, so I can't say that I ever read it.
But there were articles by different people, and I think
Scott himself wrote some articles. In fact, he had a
little cactus garden next door in another building. When
he moved next door, it had a little patio and he had his
own cactus garden there. So he wasn't just a guy that
published the magazine. He really was interested in cactus
and succulents . And then I guess he sold it . I can ' t
remember when. He may still be alive. He moved to
Vermont. Last time I talked to him he was in his eighties
and he was living in Vermont, where apparently he came
from. So for a man who was gassed in the First World War
and wasn't expected to live very long--was told to live in
the desert--he lasted a pretty long time!
ZIEGLER: Yes. [laughter]
GERRY: Let's see if there are any other people that worked
there. House Olson came in once. He had been one of the
original founders of the Castle Press. Before Grant
Dahlstrom bought it, it was founded by Roscoe Thomas and
House Olson. Roscoe put up the money and the selling
ability and the editorial ability, and House Olson was the
printer. He was a typographer. He also had worked for
Browne, although I think he came from the East. He had
worked for Browne too. But they started the shop and then
in 1942 or '43 Grant bought it from him. It never was very
16
successful. It always operated in the red. They did some
very nice work. But it was in the middle of the Depression
when they started, and the war ended when they broke up.
Thomas went away to be a manager at a department store,
Nash's Department Store in Pasadena. Olson went off
somewhere to manage a maritime-- For survivors of wrecked
ships somewhere in South America. Which seems very
improbable, but it didn't last too long, and he came back
and he worked for Grant for about two weeks . That ' s where
I met him. He ran the vertical presses there for Grant for
about two weeks, and then they had a falling-out or
something and he went on to do something-- Oh, no, he
didn't go do something else. He was a printer until the
end of his life. But he moved from printshop to printshop,
I understand. David W. Davies wrote a book on him called
House Olson, Printer.
ZIEGLER: Yes, I saw that. Could you say some about House
Olson's style as a typographer?
GERRY: Well, he was very much a contemporary typographer
of his day, of his time. He didn't hark back to the old
stuff, the old style, or try to imitate some ancient thing
like Elbert Hubbard. Even Clyde Browne was very much a
sort of the old printer trying to revive the ancient
William Morris-type stuff. Olson was a contemporary
typographer working in his own time. That's about all I
17
can say. He was good. They did a few books at the Castle
Press when Thomas and Olson owned it, and they're very
nice.
ZIEGLER: Several of these people you've mentioned had
worked with Clyde Browne. Could you say some about his
style and the products of the Abbey of San Encino Press?
GERRY: Well, let's see. Browne started as a printer much
earlier than these others I mentioned.
ZIEGLER: Did you ever meet Clyde Browne?
GERRY: No, he died in 1942. He had been printing since
probably around the turn of the century, and then into the
teens he was a Linotype operator. He worked for the [Los
Angeles] Times, I think, for a long time. Then he started
his own shop in Garvanza, which is near Highland Park, near
Los Angeles. The old abbey he built with his own hands out
of stone. As I say, he was what you call an antiquarian.
He liked the past. He used great flowery language in his
writing, and his colophons would be two pages long with
heavy purple prose. And he called it the Abbey of San
Encino. He fancied himself, I guess, as a monkish sort of
printer, although he certainly wasn't a monkish sort of
man. He did many, many things other than printing. It's
amazing, when you read the book about his life [Clyde
Browne and the Abbey San Encino by David W. Davies] , the
many things he did do. But the old building he built is
18
still down there at Figueroa and York [Boulevard] , or in
that vicinity. It was his home and his printshop. His
kind of printing was, I would say, in the style of Elbert
Hubbard, that school of printing where they revived a lot
of old typefaces. Although some of Browne's things were
very nice. He was interested in the antiquity of
printing. Oh, he did lots of contemporary printing. That
wasn't where his fancy lay, I don't think.
ZIEGLER: Can you name some of what you consider his best
work?
GERRY: You know, I can't. I saw a display of his only
once in my life that I think Ed [Edwin H.] Carpenter had
put together. They had it in a bookshop in Laguna
[Beach] . And one time the Rounce and Coffin Club was down
there and they visited this bookshop and saw this display
of Clyde Browne's material. It was all very nice, but I
can't tell you that I remember any one particular piece.
ZIEGLER: Okay. Well, maybe at this point we can quickly
summarize the things that happened to you up until the time
you started printing again on your own. Some of these
things we'll come back to a little later. But maybe a
quick biography of your life from the time you left the
Castle Press to the time you began printing again.
GERRY: Well, let's see. I left the Castle Press and the
war was still on. They had a plan called the "four- four
19
plan" for young people so that they could work at various
defense factories or wherever they needed. I worked at the
Castle Press. So I worked four hours and went to school
four hours. But then, clever lad that I was, I quit Grant
Dahlstrom and went home. And for some reason-- I don't
know why my mother went along with this, but instead of
telling the school that I was no longer working, I
continued to go to school only four hours a day. The other
four hours I took off and went to movies and such as
that. Until finally one day they called Grant to find out
what was going on, and I was called into the principal's
office to find out what I had been doing since I wasn't
working there. [laughter] But, anyway, I worked for Grant
again many times, off and on. On summers or at nights,
they'd have me come down and do some work. Of course, it
was a nice source of income when I was going to school .
Like I say, I went to Woodbury, and that wasn't too
successful. Then I got to Art Center, which was a very
good school. We were drafted, a friend of mine [John
Hoernle] and I were drafted, out of Art Center before we
even had finished a semester. And then we came back after
the Korean War. He went back to the Art Center, and I went
to Art Center and said, "Well, can you give me credit for
this partial semester I put in before we went into the
army?" And they said no, they wouldn't do that. So that.
20
in combination with the fact that it was a terribly long
way away from home-- Way out in Los Angeles, way out beyond
La Brea [Avenue], on Third [Street] I think, and I lived in
Altadena. I decided I'd go to school closer, which was the
Chouinard school. It was on Grand View [Street] between
Seventh [Street] and Eighth [Street] near MacArthur Park.
I went there, and fortunately-- It wasn't a studied choice,
but it was certainly a lucky choice. Because I was about
twenty- four years old, and I was old enough to understand
some things I probably wouldn't have otherwise, because I'm
very slow to catch on to things anyway.
So I went there for about two years on the GI Bill.
Oh, maybe-- It was about two years, two and a half years,
and I began to realize that I wasn't going to be an
illustrator. It required a lot of talent. Once the famous
illustrator Andrew Loomis had come from somewhere and given
this talk to aspiring young artists, and he said, "You have
as much of a chance to be a magazine illustrator as you do
to be a movie star!"
ZEIGLER: Oh, how depressing.
GERRY: Yeah, it was. It wasn't until I was about twenty-
six that I decided I wasn't going to be able to do it. So
what was I going to do? I could keep on going to school.
I still had some GI Bill left. So I was talking to Grant
again, and he said, "Why don't you come work for me and be
21
a salesman? A salesman meets the customers and he designs
all the jobs, so you'll use your art school training and
you'll have a job." Well, the idea of a salesman was
absolutely the last thing I wanted to do. I mean, one
reason a person likes to be an artist is because they're by
themselves. They don't ever have to talk to anybody.
ZEIGLER: Yeah. [laughter]
GERRY: And to be a salesman was really — I mean, I just
couldn't conceive of it. But he made it sound very good.
He would help me, and he said, "There's nothing to
selling. All you have to do is have confidence in your
product." Well, I could do that. And he said, "Selling is
just a matter of making a continual appearance in front of
your public. Why, I used to know a salesman who was the
most socially obnoxious person you would ever come across,
that was always coming into our office, always hanging
around. Nobody liked him, but he always got the printing
job. They always gave him the work." So I said, "Okay.
I'll do that. Grant."
I went back to school and I told Don Graham, "I'm
going to quit school and I'm going to work. A man has
offered me a job. I'm grown up. I'm an adult now, and I'm
going to go to work." And he said, "Oh, you can't do that,
because you have spent all this time in art school." And,
I suppose in parentheses, "I have spent all this time
22
trying to teach you something." I don't know if he thought
that or not, but he didn't want me to do it. He wanted me
to go on and be an artist, which was the first time he had
ever even indicated that I should even be an artist,
[laughter] But, anyway, he said, "You go out to the Disney
Studios. They're hiring some people out there because of
television. Here's this person. You call him up and go
out there." So I called this person, and they said-- I
mean, Disney was not the place necessarily I wanted to have
a job. I hadn't thought about Disney since I was about ten
years old. I put together a portfolio that night and took
it out the next day, and they looked at it. And here I
was. I walked into this huge-- It was like a campus. They
had lawns and trees and people roaming around. It looked
like a school .
ZEIGLER: Where was the Disney Studio?
GERRY: This was the Disney Studio on Buena Vista Street in
Burbank. There were all these people. I must have come
there just at break time. So I was kind of, you know, "Is
this a place where people really work?" I was used to
dingy old places with machinery and so-- They looked at my
portfolio, and they called me back and said, "Yes, you can
start at so-and-so a date." So I told Grant, "I'm not
going to be a salesman after all. I'm going out to
Disney." Well, his only comment was, "Well, I sure don't
23
approve of what he did to Alice In Wonderland." So I said,
"Oh? Well, gee." So I went out to work with the man who
ruined Alice in Wonderland.
ZIEGLER: [laughter] Do you have any general comments on
that? I mean, Disney has taken a lot of illustrated
children's classics and redone the pictures.
GERRY: Oh, sure. Well, that's what he was good at,
redoing them, putting some entertainment into them and
making them reach a large audience. I worked at Disney for
quite a while. But it was a very--
It is a very collaborative sort of work. All motion
picture work is. There wasn't really much room for one's
own ego to show through. You could never say, "I did this
or I did that," because somebody else had already worked on
it or you'd worked on somebody else's efforts. So, for
some reason, I got back to thinking about printing, and
it's something that I can do at home. I kept looking in
the Los Angeles typefounders catalog. And I was telling my
wife [Mary Palmer Gerry] about what fun it would be. We
would have a little press in the basement and all.
So one Christmas my foolish wife bought me a font of
type. Her brother [Russell Palmer], who was in the
magazine business, got from his printer a case and a
stick. And they gave it to me for Christmas. Well, I
started to put the type in the case. I guess this would be
24
in the early sixties. And I could even remember almost the
whole lay of the case, of the California job case, and
which compartment which letter went into. So I was all
excited.
ZIEGLER: That's quite an accomplishment, having tried some
printing myself last quarter. I didn't learn the case.
GERRY: Well, remember I had worked at it over and over and
over.
25
TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
APRIL 20, 1989
ZIEGLER: Okay. You were telling about how your wife gave
you a font of type and your brother-in-law found a type
case for you, and you remembered the lay of the case.
GERRY: So I had to get a printing press. I went down to a
man named Harry Lincoln, who was down on Kingsley [Drive] ,
right near Beverly [Boulevard] and Ardmore [Avenue] . Just
off of Beverly. And he had in his garage-- He catered to
amateur printers. He had little hand printing presses and
he had used type. Everything for the lovely amateur
printer. It was great. It was fun to go there. I'd go on
a Saturday and buy this, and then I bought the press.
ZIEGLER: How much did presses cost then?
GERRY: This was a 5" X 8" Kelsey, and it cost $65, I
think. It was either brand-new or it was practically
new. I don't know what they cost today, but probably
considerably more. Then I would buy some type from Mr.
Lincoln and the leads and the slugs and the cases. A used
case ran about $3 to $4 in those days. I built a little
printshop down in the basement of our house. And it was
fun. We did little ephemeral things--I can't remember any
of them now- -and we did a couple of books. A little book
[Some Epigrammatical Notes] by a fellow at work who used to
write little sayings down and leave them on your desk when
26
you weren't looking.
ZIEGLER: A fellow worker at Disney?
GERRY: This was a fellow named Tony [Anthony] Rizzo. He
was a background painter. This was at the Disney Studio.
So that was probably the first book I did, a book of his
sayings. Little things he had written and left on my
desk. I did it one page at a time. And a man who was an
animator named Lou [Louis] Appet--he later became the
business agent for the cartoonist local [Screen Cartoonists
Guild] . He taught me how to bind my first book. It was
printed one sheet at a time on both sides and then it was
perfect-bound. The edges of the pages were all glued
together, glued to a piece of super, and then it was put in
a case. If you pulled the pages good and hard, they would
come right out, but it was done. It was my very first
book.
ZIEGLER: The librarian's joke that perfect-bound is far
from perfect. [laughter]
GERRY: Right. And I guess I did maybe ten copies of
that. Then later on-- I'm sorry, I bound ten copies. Then
later on I issued some more with a wrapper. Then I think I
did another book--and this is all on the little 5" X 8"
Kelsey--called The Night before Christmas. Everybody does
that. And bound it in red. By this time, I'd bought some
nice type. I bought Bembo narrow italic, and that's what I
27
set The Night before Christmas in.
ZIEGLER: What was the font that your wife gave you?
GERRY: Oh, she gave a font of 18-point Ultra Bodoni. It's
a very black face. It's very thick Bodoni. It wasn't very
practical, but I think I may still have it and may still be
using it. For certain things it's good. So the Christmas
book I did and bound in green enamel paper, and it had a
multicolored title page. I think I did ten of those. I
bound them on the dining room table. We didn't have a--
ZIEGLER: You wrote the forward for it?
GERRY: I think so, yes. I guess I was getting into--
ZIEGLER: I remember reading an amusing forward at the
Clark about how Clement [C] Moore wanted to be remembered
as a theologian and ended up being remembered for The Night
before Christmas.
GERRY: Yes, I guess that must have been the first time I
did that. Because almost everything afterwards I had to
make some comment on. I did not think of myself as a
writer at all. But then that didn't seem enough. Now, I
was interested in book printing and I got a larger press.
I got a Chandler 8" X 12". Some friends helped me move it,
and I put some concrete piers in the basement and built the
printshop around it. Our house was on the side of a hill,
so there was room to expand underneath the house, because
the house was empty below where the hill sloped. And so I
28
built — That would be the second printshop, because I had
the bigger press and then I got a proof press, a little Hoe
or Miles. A little cast-iron drum-cylinder press, the
crudest kind of press, for proofs only. And I had some
more cases of type and I bought some more type, and I was
pretty much fixed on printing at this time. So I worked in
that little shop for quite a while. I took the press apart
completely and cleaned it all up and painted it. I may
have done some other books, and then I did one about the
platen press, which was the kind of press I had, which was
a little jobbing press.
ZIEGLER: Is that the one with the ground plate that inks?
GERRY: Right. And opens and closes on your hand, or not,
hopefully. That would be my second serious printshop. I
was getting a little more serious now. Around 1965, we
would visit Laguna Beach frequently. In the window of the
newspaper when you would walk by, there was an old Linotype
there, and I got intrigued. I wanted to get a Linotype.
Because as a kid working for Dahlstrom, I had been
interested in this fascinating machine that did these
things. But, you know, I was never allowed to get near it,
because it was a very sensitive, very touchy machine. Boys
were not supposed to ever get near it. I mean, if Helen
Sloan ever caught you anywhere near the vicinity of it, she
would really give you a good chewing out. So I wanted-- I
29
was really interested in the mechanics of it, I would
guess, equally as much as in the ability to set type. So
as time progressed, I became more and more obsessed with
this idea of getting a machine. It was coincidental with
the time when most printers were going over to offset and
getting rid of their hot metal equipment.
I found a dealer by the name of Nate Freeman, who had
a printing metal service where they serviced hot metal
people by remelting their metal type for them and cleaning
it up and putting it back into bars that could be made into
more type. That was the service they offered. But on the
side, he was also a dealer in used machinery. So I bought
my first Linotype from him for $600, I think. It was a
terrible lot of money. And I also bought from him a Miehle
vertical, which could print four pages up and feed
itself. It was an automatic job cylinder press. And I
bought a paper cutter, and I moved it all into a building
in South Laguna. My intention was eventually to move down
there and have this shop. So this was my third shop. Now
it was serious business.
I invested probably $3,000 in all this stuff. I don't
know how my wife went along with it, but she seemed to, for
a while anyway. So that's when I started the Weather Bird
Press. We would drive down every weekend. We had a house
there, and we would go down every weekend and slave away in
30
the printshop. I'd print anything anybody wanted me to
print to sort of help pay for it.
ZIEGLER: For a while you called your press the Peach Pit
Press.
GERRY: Right. I think when I first started printing, I'd
read or seen a number of articles about a guy in the East
named Morris or "Moe" Liebowitz, who was the champion of —
What do you want to say? Bedroom printers, backroom
printers, amateur printers. And he had gathered all sorts
of material from people who were changing their
technology. He had a lot of fun with it, did amazing
things with old type and old wooden type that people had
given him. I forget what his press was called. I think it
was the Bluegrass Press or something. But people had funny
names for their presses--they all tried to be amusing and
say amusing things. So I thought Peach Pit Press was very--
what?- -alliterative.
ZEIGLER: Yeah. I like it. I like both your names.
GERRY: But then when I went to Laguna, or when I got the
Linotype and the bigger and larger press, I thought, "No,
this is too serious." So we tried out all sorts of
names. My wife came up with Weather Bird.
ZIEGLER: How did you come up on that?
GERRY: Well, I think — We were trying to think of names
like the "Tide Pool," something to do with the beach.
31
Then, also, I had learned that Gerald Murphy, who was an
expatriate of the twenties and a friend of Hemingway and
Picasso, lived in the south of France and in Paris-- He had
a yacht. And in his yacht he put Louis Armstrong's record
of "Weatherbird [Rag]." He put this record in his yacht,
the keel of his yacht--he so much liked the record. It
felt like it gave him good luck or something. So when I
remembered that, I thought, "Yeah, 'Weather Bird. ' That
sounds good. If Gerald Murphy would do that, that sounds
good enough for me." I mean, I didn't do it because of
Louie. I mean, I'm a great fan of Louie Armstrong, but
that isn't why I did it. Because "Weather Bird" sounded
like something to do with the beach. See the birds sitting
out there .
ZIEGLER: Yeah, it ' s a great name, and you have a beautiful
logo of the weather bird.
GERRY: I never did come up with a logo.
ZIEGLER: Oh, I thought it was sort of acting as a logo,
just a single bird.
GERRY: I used like a little sandpiper for a while. But I
really don't have a logo. I keep thinking I'm going to
design one, but I never have. Now, where did that get
us? Up to the Weather Bird Press, right?
ZIEGLER: Yes.
GERRY: Shall I go on with that?
32
ZIEGLER: Yes.
GERRY: In about 1968 I went to — I talked my wife into
going down-- I wanted to live at the beach, and I was going
to quit my job and I was going to make a successful
printing company out of this. So every Wednesday I'd go
out and sell, which I had no idea how to do. I would just
go visit people. I did have one pretty good account from a
friend who had a company that made heart valves [Hancock
Laboratories], and he gave me a lot of business. But what
I wanted to do was be like-- I had seen Grant and Ward
[Ritchie] and Haselton-- They had supported their book
printing by commercial printing. So I was going to not
only do the commercial printing to pay for the whole thing,
I was going to be able to do some books along with that.
And I did. I printed more and more books. And the
publications that I did were money-making, commercial
printing.
So, really, it lasted about six months. The studio
called me and they said, "If you come back, we'll do this
and that and make these concessions, " and so on and so
forth. My wife didn't like Laguna, or didn't like the
beach, and I was naturally worried that I wasn't going to
be able to keep this thing going. So I said, "Okay, we'll
go back, and I'll go back to work. But we're going to buy
a house and it's going to have room so that I can have all
33
this equipment and have this shop in the backyard. Now,
that's my deal." Okay. So we looked around until we found
the house which you saw the other day. That was 1969 or
'70. I moved in and I had a garage built and had all my
equipment moved up from Laguna, and the press stayed there
for another ten years. And I did it on my spare time, just
about like today. So I worked there for quite a while in
the shop in the backyard, which was about six hundred
square feet. So there was room for everything. I even had
a small horizontal cylinder press that would print a sheet
22" X 28". I used that for a while, but it wasn't very
good. Finally I got rid of it and got a large Vandercook
that would print about a 19" X 25" sheet. That was my best
press. It was a hand-operated, but it would still-- Got
some of my best work out of that.
Then in about 1977, I moved to Fallbrook and I built a
house. It was a very small house with an eight-hundred-
square- foot shop. At that time I had just retired from
work, and I felt I had enough to just barely get by on. I
could run my shop and do what I wanted to do! Which I did
for about two years, and those were a good two years. Did
a lot of work. Then I went into partnership with Patrick
Reagh in 1980. He talked me into becoming his partner.
Meanwhile, I had gone back to the studio a couple of times
to pick up another grubstake. They were very good about
34
taking me back on projects they had. So Pat and I became
partners--that lasted about a year. And so now all my
equipment was divided up between Pat's and what was left
down in Fallbrook. So I guess I rearranged another shop
down in Fallbrook, but I remodeled the house so the shop
was much smaller now. What had been a shop, I turned into
bedrooms .
Then, two or three years ago, I decided I didn't want
to live in the country anymore. I hadn't done all the
things I had thought I was going to do with the house and
the property. So I gave all my equipment to Ray Ballish,
who is a collector out at the Orange Empire [Railway]
Museum. He came and picked it all up, the machinery and so
on I had, and took it to a storage in Paris. He one day
hoped to have a museum building there. So that's where the
stuff is. I mean my equipment. I was going to give it up
and be a painter of watercolors and not be bothered with
machinery and printing. So that lasted about two years,
two or three years. Ray had set it up so we could work in
Paris. He had a little operating printshop there. Paris,
California, down by Riverside. In case you were thinking
it was Paris, France.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, I was wondering.
GERRY: So that lasted about two years, I guess. Recently,
I built a shop again in the backyard.
35
ZIEGLER: So you found you missed printing?
GERRY: Right. I wanted to get another Linotype and a
press. There were some manuscripts that came my way that I
was interested in. Although I haven't done them. So here
I am again, back with a little printshop. I have a
Washington handpress that I borrowed, and I have a C4
typesetting machine and a few cases of type and a board
shear and a table, and that's about it. And a large
cabinet to hold all the miscellaneous junk.
ZIEGLER: What are the manuscripts?
GERRY: Well, the first thing that got me interested--and
made me want to be a printer again- -was Jane Apostol ' s
manuscript for the biography of Olive Percival, who was an
interesting California book woman, who died, I guess, in
the forties. She [wrote] a very interesting story about
this very amazing woman, very creative and loved books.
Spent her whole life--or I think most of her whole life--
taking care of her mother. She built a little house over
in Highland Park. She worked for an insurance company all
of her life--or the latter part of her life, thirty years I
think--and financed all her book collecting and her house
on her small salary. Anyway, so that was interesting and I
wanted to do that. But then, of course, I didn't have a
shop.
There was an ad in the paper for a Colt ' s Armory
36
press, which was the kind of press I had tried to get when
I very first started and instead I had to buy a Miehle
vertical. But the Colt's Armory press is like a heavy-duty
platen press, like a job press. It has a tremendous amount
of strength. You could print four pages on it at four
pages up and have some kind of control over it. But I
could never find one. So that was the other thing that
made me want to start printing again. A guy had one for
sale, although I didn't get it. I kept thinking I would
get one, so I was tricked back into printing.
ZIEGLER: [laughter] Well, it sounds like it really was
hard to give it up.
GERRY: Yeah. Well, as Mr. Haselton always used to say,
"You know, printing gets in your blood and you never get it
out! Ha-ha-ha, you're going to get it in your blood one of
these days and it will never get out." And, you know, he
was just joking around, but he was sort of right. People
who have ever fooled around with printing always either
remember it with fondness or keep going back to it.
ZIEGLER: Yes, I had a lot of fun printing here at the
library school.
GERRY: Oh, with Diana [Thomas]?
ZEIGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: They have that press, the Harmar? What's it
called? Is it the Harmar press?
37
ZIEGLER: I'm afraid I'm bad at remembering names.
GERRY: It was a handpress, wasn't it? Like this?
ZIEGLER: I had some unpleasant experiences with the platen
press. I had a terrible time getting that to work right
for me. I remember reading something you wrote about. In
South Laguna you could take a break from kicking the platen
jobber and go out and watch the whales migrate. I really
identified with the feeling!
GERRY: Well, by kicking I meant-- It was a treadle
press. It operated like a sewing machine; that's why they
called that kicking. But they probably kick it for other
reasons, too.
ZIEGLER: The one I used didn't actually have to be
treadled. But I felt the urge to kick it for other reasons
at times! [laughter]
GERRY: Well, printing is terribly frustrating. Like I
say, I was ready to give it all up and get away from it.
Just do something simple where what you needed you could
carry in a little package in your car: some pieces of
paper and some paints. But in order to print you have to
have this machinery that costs a fortune to move and then
is impossible to get rid of because nobody wants it anymore
when you have to get rid of it. So there I am, trapped
back into it! I've got the shop so it operates now.
Tomorrow I'm going to start setting type on the first
38
project, which is a supplement to the book I printed called
The San Pasqual Press; [A Dream Nearly Realized] , about the
San Pasqual Press. Since I printed the book I found out
more information, and I'm going to do this supplement.
ZIEGLER: So you've really gotten to know a lot about the
history of printing in the Los Angeles area, haven't you?
You did the book on the San Pasqual Press, and you did a
book on House Olson.
GERRY: Yeah, right. I guess so, but I also think I'm
probably more interested because of all the writing Ward
Ritchie did about the printers of Los Angeles. If I got
interested in it, it was because of his writing about the
printers of Los Angeles as well as the other bookmen of Los
Angeles .
ZIEGLER: Well, I'd like to talk a little more later on
about the whole Los Angeles book scene, but I wonder if now
we could talk some about the books you've printed. How do
you chose what books to print?
GERRY: Oh, let's see. When I first started I could never
find anything to print. I know it sounds strange but I
really couldn't, other than reprinting Gray's "Elegy" or
something like that. I mean, that was what was
available. And so Pall [W.] Bohne--who you've probably
heard of as a printer, although he hasn't printed anything
for a long time--said, "Oh, you have to write your own
39
stuff." I said, "What! Wait a minute, I don't know how to
write." "Well, I just wrote my book on whaling in one
evening." And he made it sound very easy. So I forget
what I wrote. Maybe that's when I wrote-- No. I guess the
first thing I wrote was my experiences as a boy printer
with Grant Dahlstrom [Some Fond Remembrances of a Boy
Printer at the Castle Press] . So that was one that I
wrote. He wanted me to write other things, but I can't
remember right offhand any others that I wrote. I should
have a list of the books here.
When I choose a book, it's usually a subject I like.
I kind of like to do cookbooks and books on printing. Or
original things, like Jane's. I did a little booklet. Will
Bradley, that Jane Apostol had written. I did that. That
was original, and I would really much rather do original
things. Then I did that M. F. K. Fisher story. The
Standing and the Waiting, because it was a story I very
much liked. I fantasized me illustrating it for years. It
took years to get the rights to do it, although Mrs. Fisher
wanted me to do it. But she had no control over the
rights, and it was impossible to find out who had the
rights. Then to have them sell you the rights is even
another problem, because there is not enough money in it
for them .
ZIEGLER: Yes, I saw some of your correspondence in your
40
papers at the Clark. You were having trouble finding out
who had the rights to it.
GERRY: But Susan King helped me on that. She said,
"You've got to get ahold of her agent and force him.
You've got to be aggressive." Well, I don't think I'd ever
called New York in my life, but she said, "You've got to
call him and tell him. You've just got to be aggressive,
or he'll just avoid you." So I finally got this guy on the
phone. I couldn't believe it! It's like being in the
Powell Library and also knowing a guy named Larry Powell .
[laughter] Susan was right. I had to get the guy and
twist his arm, and he finally said, "No, I don't know who
the heck's got them, but you might try Macmillan
[Publishing Company]." So then I finally called Macmillan,
and once you get somebody's name, you've got half a chance
of getting through. I learned that. So I got some help
from Susan--and also from Herb Yellin--on how to get rights
to publish things. Herb Yellin and the Lord John Press.
He does nothing but reprinting of American authors' work.
ZIEGLER: Could you talk a little about your collaboration
with Herb Yellin? You did three or four different books
for the Lord John Press, didn't you?
GERRY: Yeah. I think one of the best books I have ever
done was one for Herb. It was when I was in Laguna. No,
no, I was in Fallbrook. I had my ideal shop attached to my
41
house, and he called me. He was interested in getting
different California printers to do work for him, and he
had--he still has--a very extensive publishing list. Every
year, he does three or four books. So I said, "Yes,
indeed. I will do a book for you." And that was John
Cheever's book, a reprint of a story in the New Yorker
called "The Day the Pig Fell in the Well." That was the
most extensive typesetting I had done up to that time, also
the most careful. I was very careful to make sure it was
tightly spaced and to make the lines as tight as I possibly
could, which doesn't give you much speed on a Linotype or
any other way. But I think it was my best job of
typesetting, and the whole book turned out very well. I
bound about fourteen of those--they were special copies--
and Bela Blau bound the rest. That was my first
experience. We had a lot of fun, and he liked the work
very well. It's nice to be liked, and we didn't have any
arguments or fights or lawsuits or anything.
He had another book later on that he wanted me to do--
oh, I guess it was by James Purdy--called Proud Flesh. It
was about six plays that Purdy had written. I think maybe
one of them had never been performed. That's when I would
go up to Herb's house and we would lie around the living
room. He had another fellow who worked there named Bruce
Francis, and we'd talk about this. Herb liked that, to lie
42
back and we'd talk about how we were going to make the
book. It was very nice, pleasant.
ZIEGLER: Yes, I saw a lot of your sketches for these at
the Clark.
GERRY: Oh, yeah. Well, we made the book, and I did a
terrible title page, which I apologized to him for later
on. I said, "I owe you a title page." But it was one of
those title pages that I had fantasized, and drew and
sketched and fooled around and fooled around till I
completely ruined it. And in the end I didn't approve of
it, although Herb didn't seem to mind it.
ZIEGLER: What was it like?
GERRY: Oh, it was some sort of floating drapes. Sort of
Bermanesque drapes floating around a couple of poles that
might suggest a theater stage or something, and then the
type was set in the center of it. It just didn't come off
too well.
But then I did another book for him called Out of the
West: [Poems by William Everson, Gary Snyder, Philip
Levine, Clayton Eshleman and Jerome Rothenberg] . It was
California poets. The endpapers were going to be a map of
California, and it showed where every poet was. It also
showed where the publisher was and the printer was. He
kept wanting me to put my name on there, and I said, "I'm
not a poet. You didn't put your name under publisher. I'm
43
just going to have it say 'printer,' that's all." There
was this map in the endpapers where the different poets and
the publisher and the printer were located. It was sort of
cute. And the poems were very, very nice. That's when I--
Probably some of the first known California poets that I'd
ever read. Set all in Janson. That turned out pretty
good, a pretty nice job.
I think those were the only three. Then when I was
with Pat Reagh, Pat Reagh and I did a number of things for
Herb together. There was one we did-- Oh, a lot of things,
broadsides too. One broadside I think is really very good
by Ursula [K.] LeGuin called Torrey Pine Reserve. I think
it really turned out very well. I had been up to see a
friend in Idyllwild, and I had my sketchbook out and I was
drawing the pine trees. And I said, "I have this job that
has something to do with Torrey pines." So my friend,
wiser than I, said, "Those aren't Torrey pines! Torrey
pines don't look like that at all!" I said, "Really?
Heck. " So the next thing I did was go to Torrey Pines,
which was really not too far from Fallbrook, down in Del
Mar. I went to Torrey Pines and it was revealed to me what
a beautiful place Torrey Pines was as I hiked through there
and saw what the real pines looked like. So from that I
made a linoleum cut that may or may not look like Torrey
pines, but it looked pretty good. And that was a nice
44
Job. When it turns out well, you're pleased.
ZIEGLER: How did Herb Yellin get started with the Lord
John Press? How did he get the idea?
GERRY: I really don't know. He was in love with [John]
Updike. And there were so many writers named John that he
wanted to call his press the Lord John Press for the best
writer named John. He had published a newsletter about
Updike for quite a while. He's a book dealer too. Herb.
He sells books through the mail. Antiquarian and first
editions stuff mostly. He's a great first edition
collector. So I guess somewhere along the line, he decided
he wanted to do some publishing. For a while he was just
doing that, but I think most of the time he has to
subsidize by working like the rest of us. He enjoyed
meeting the authors, because he usually talks to them in
person. He says he doesn't, but that must be something to
have contact with them. Of course, he was a good friend of
Updike's, who was his absolutely favorite writer. He has
an extensive publication policy for, you know, a guy who
was doing it for a sideline. So he must know every living
American author.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, it sounds like it would be thrilling.
GERRY: Pat and I did a number of books for [Ralph]
Sylvester and [Stathis] Orphanos. They're Los Angeles
publishers who also are book dealers. They also publish
45
the same sort of thing that Herb does, which is usually
something like a reprint of a well-known author. Although
they don't limit themselves to American authors. They have
a lot of English authors, too. We did quite a few books
for them; Pat still does books for them. In fact, I'm
doing some illustrations for one of their books right now.
ZIEGLER: What is it?
GERRY: I can't remember what it's called, but it's a
little travelogue by Graham Greene about his visit to
China. Darn, I can't remember the title. It's going to be
a miniature book.
ZIEGLER: I wanted to ask you to describe the books that
were the greatest pleasure for you to work on and that
you're most pleased with.
GERRY: I think probably the one I'm most pleased with was
also my most successful book, as far as sales go, A^
Treatise on the Art and Antiquity of Cookery in the Middle
Ages.
ZIEGLER: Yes, that is very handsome.
GERRY: Because it was all original. It was written by a
gal [Rochelle Lucky] who was married to a fellow I worked
with, and we got together. It was all original material
that she'd done for a master's thesis. So she rewrote it
for me to publish it, as we did in the little two-volume
book. We worked a long time on it, because first of all
46
she had to rewrite it, and I kept thinking, "Well, she
won't do it. People say they'll do it, but they won't."
But not her. She really did it. But then halfway through
she had a baby, and that held her up for some time. So the
book was actually in the works for years before it was
finally finished. Everybody liked it, and it sold very
well. I forget how many we did, maybe 150 or 200. It's
all out of print now. That was, I guess, my favorite one.
ZIEGLER: What were some of your other favorites?
GERRY: The one I did for Herb by John Cheever, The Day the
Pig Fell in the Well. That, I think, came out very well.
I think I have it written down here. Then I did a little
book called Topography of the Castle Press, [circa 1943,
and Other Dim Recollections] . I wrote that and I drew this
map. I mean, I say I wrote it--there's probably three
pages of type. But there was this map of how I remembered
the Castle Press. At the time I thought it was very
original, but I must have gotten the idea from this fellow
who'd worked for the Woolfs, Virginia and Leonard Woolf,
and their Hogarth Press. Because if you look-- His name
was [Richard] Kennedy I believe. In his book of
remembrances, he draws a map of the Hogarth Press. So that
might be where I got the idea. I get all these ideas that
I think are so original and discover that I've seen them
somewhere else.
47
So it was a big foldout map. I was over to see Grant
one day, and I said, "What was this part? What was
here?" He couldn't remember. And he said, "That's kind of
interesting. I'll tell you what, I'll print that map for
you." Because it was so long, we figured out how wide his
biggest press was, and it was like thirty-six inches or
something, so I drew it to fit that size. He offered to
print it for me, which was-- I don't know how else I would
have done it. I would have had to pay somebody, which is
all right too. I didn't mind that, but it was nice. It
showed that he liked the project. He didn't think it was
silly. He wasn't ashamed to be associated with me and this
book, thin book- -all my books are very thin.
So the night they were-- He had sold the press. They
had an open house and they had all the presses going, and
the largest press was printing these maps. They decided to
do them that night, and it just coincidentally worked
out. So they were printing all these maps of the old
Castle Press down on Union Street, and, of course, this was
the new Castle Press, which was up on Fair Oaks [Avenue]
and was very modern and up-to-date. It had fancy presses
and clean rooms and well-dressed employees! [laughter] So
they must have run off thousands and thousands of that map
that night. And people were coming around and asking me to
sign it, and it was kind of impressive. Anyway, I think
48
that turned out typographically to be one of the best
books. And also as a book of remembrances, I like it. And
the fact that it has more-- I like books that have little
extra things in them like foldouts or tipped-in pictures,
that aren't just all type. And let's see, what else do I
have here? You know, we should do this again when I have a
list of books in front of me.
ZIEGLER: Well, as a matter of fact, I have a stack of
cards here .
GERRY: Oh, really!
49
TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
APRIL 20, 1989
ZIEGLER: So you're looking at the list I compiled of the
books that you've printed. I know that this list isn't
complete, so any that you want to add-- I'd be delighted to
hear your comments on any of these and your memories of
working on them.
GERRY: Well, you've done really a lot of work to round
these all up. I mean, I often think of doing this myself,
and I never have. We talked about the topography, and you
said that we should keep in-- I thought we should never
talk about [Sheikh Nefzawi's] Bahloul and Hamdouna, which
is an excerpt from The Perfumed Garden, which was a
pornographic, or whatever, erotic tale printed by the
Weather Bird Press for a while, for what reason I can't
remember now. I guess I saw it as a vehicle for some
illustrations. It was like a onetime experience. I have
no inclination to print any more pornographic books!
ZIEGLER: Well, but I thought it was a beautifully designed
book. The choice of colors, the sort of glaring purple and
the flesh-colored pink, was absolutely perfect for the
subject! And the way you designed the letters they looked
very-- Well, you know, they looked like what the book was
about !
GERRY: Right. Well, I did enjoy doing that. The sort of
50
interesting way I did the cover. I covered papers. I just
sort of took a screwdriver and just bashed a design into a
block of pine, and then I put that in the press--type high--
and printed the cover papers from that. It was rather
crude, but it made sort of an Eastern design on it.
ZIEGLER: As I remember, the cover is sort of a floral
design, which at the same time suggest genitals.
GERRY: Oh, I don't know if I did that on the cover. But
in the title page I did a design that sort of suggested
that. And what else was I going to say about the book?
Urn, yes, the illustrations were all cut linoleum. Well, I
guess that's about enough for that one. Oh, I know what I
was about to say. This was one of the first books I sent
to the private press people, Roderick Cave, in England.
They put out a catalog every year of the work of private
presses, and I sent them a copy of this. And they, lo and
behold, published the title page in their catalog, which I
am really more impressed with each time I see the fact that
they did that . Because now I don ' t know how I would ever
get them to print a title page of mine. There's so much
competition. So it was a nice title page, even I'll admit
that. Just the subject was questionable. I did want them--
I wrote a book under the pseudonym of Bunston Quayles.
ZIEGLER: Oh, that's interesting to know. I was very
impressed with that book. Did you also do the takeoff s on
51
the styles of the different artists in there?
GERRY: Right, right. I don't know how I got this idea,
because this was another book that was in the works for a
very long, long time off and on. It was called Miniatures
on Modern Artists: [Some Notes] . I made interpretations of
these famous artist's works. There was Modigliani,
Matisse, Bonnard, and others.
ZIEGLER: Right on the mark I thought. You really got the
essentials of the different styles.
GERRY: Yeah, and I did it without actually reproducing any
of the real pictures, so there were no problems with
copyright. I discovered to do other than the modern
artists was much too difficult to do in a line technique,
which most of those works-- Some of them are halftones, but
most of them are done in a line technique. So I finally
got rid of Rembrandt and some of the other older artists
and stuck strictly with the modern artists, because it was
easier to reproduce pictures that represented them. So
that little book I thought was kind of cute. It was a
miniature coffee table book. But, oddly enough, it's never
sold very well.
ZIEGLER: What's it like printing miniature books? Is it
harder than printing regular books?
GERRY: Yes, miniatures are a terrible pain. Everyone
hates them who has to print them, except maybe those people
52
who are attuned. That's all they do is miniature books.
But if you are a large printer and do large printing, to go
down and do miniature books is difficult. Because the
smaller you make it, the more critical everything is, and
the binding is the worst part. It only has to be off the
width of a pen line and it is noticeable to the person who
looks at the book. Where a larger book can be off an
eighth of an inch and nobody's going to notice. So it's
all critical and it all takes little tiny fingers and
patience. But it can be done on the kitchen table. So in
that respect the miniatures are okay.
ZIEGLER: Then there was another book by Bunston Quayles,
who I now know is you, about miniature books. Printed for
Dawson's Book Shop, I think.
GERRY: Oh, yes, I remember that. A Picture Book of
Chickens is a miniature book. The reason that was printed
was because a friend of mine, who was a machinery dealer
named Ernie [Ernest A.] Lindner, had bought a print shop
that had belonged to a man who had published The Poultry
Journal. I think that's what it was. And this man had for
years and years set the type by hand and printed this
little paper for poultry people. Finally he was too old to
do that anymore, so he gave up the paper and he sold all
the stuff to Ernie. And Ernie had this huge box of chicken
cuts, and by "cuts" I mean photoengravings of chickens that
53
were all type high that this man had used over the years to
print The Poultry Journal. So I said, "Hey, let me borrow
this." And I picked through and got out the smallest and
nicest ones I could. I said, "I'll make a little book of
chickens out of this." Then in the library I tried to
identify which kind of chicken was which. I'm not sure I
was too successful in identifying the chickens, but it made
a cute little book, now out of print.
ZEIGLER: It did.
GERRY: This was one Dawson's had me do, the Bibliography
of Cheney Miniatures. William Cheney is himself a printer
of miniature books in Los Angeles, and Glen [Dawson] had me
do this. I think it came out pretty good. Carey [S.]
Bliss was the one who put it all together. It was set in
6-point Falcon on the Linotype. Setting miniatures on a
Linotype is pretty hard because of the spacing, but it came
out pretty well.
Flowers on a Table: [A Study of an Imprudent Wood
Engraving] , that was a silly thing. It was one of my first
wood engravings. I just kept cutting away at this wood
engraving till I finally ruined it, so I just kept cutting
it away until it finally disappeared, and the last page is
blank. So you could see it deteriorate before your eyes.
ZIEGLER: Yes, I enjoyed that book. It was fun.
GERRY: This was Ernest Lindner again [The Ernest A.
54
Lindner Collection of Antique Printing Machinery] . He had
done some work for me as a dealer. I'd bought some things
from him and he had rebuilt some matrices for me, and so
on. So I knew him. And then in his shop in downtown L.A.,
he had this vast collection of antique printing machinery
that he had assembled. So I said, "Say, Ernie, we ought to
make a book about this." So in 1971 this was, I got a
friend of mine and we got together and Ernie helped us and
we photographed--in a number of lengthy sessions — all these
presses and the other equipment he had and made this book,
which I had printed offset by a trade printer. I set the
type for it and laid it out. I think I bound most of them
myself.
And Rochelle Lucky, A Treatise on the Art and
Antiquity of Cookery in the Middle Ages. We discussed that
earlier, but that was one of my better efforts I think.
Some of them I bound, and then later on I was rich enough
to have Earl Gray Bindery do them.
Louise Seymour Jones, A Tussle Mussie. This was an
excerpt from a book that Ward [Ritchie] had printed called
Who Loves a Garden. I just loved the way this woman wrote
about gardens and about anything, so I got permission from
Ward and Jake [Zeitlin], who had published it. I think it
was a Primavera Press book printed sometime in the
thirties. So Jake said, "Well, I think it's only decent of
55
you to get permission." I said, "But she's been long
dead!" He said, "Well, here's the name of her son." So I
talked to her son and he was very glad to let me do it if I
would give him a few copies. And that was a nice little
book. I did a wood engraving for that and bound it in
cloth, a little flowered cloth I got from the yardage
store.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, I remember seeing where you had tried out
different patterns of cloth to see which worked best.
GERRY : The San Pasqual Press; [A Dream Nearly Realized] .
I wrote this book because David W. Davies was writing a
number of books about Los Angeles printers and mostly
published by Dawson's. I wanted him to do it and he died
before I could really get him interested in it. So then I
thought Ward should write it because he had written a
little bit about the press earlier, and no, he wouldn't do
it. So I kept asking around, and finally I ended up doing
it, because I became very interested in the San Pasqual
Press. And, like I've said earlier, the first project of
my new press is to print a supplement to this, since I
found out only after I printed the book that there's more
information, which I'll include myself.
ZIEGLER: I think all authors find that out.
GERRY: John Gerry and His Descendants, I just did this.
My father [Francis B. Gerry] and I did this as a family
56
tree, and that's about that.
The Standing and the Waiting was a book I dreamed
about for a long time written by M. F. K. Fisher, one of my
favorite authors. I fantasized for years about the
illustrations I was going to make for it. They were going
to be pochoir stencil illustrations I'd do in watercolor.
I made sketches and made sketches and designed the book
over and over. Finally I talked to Herb [Yellin] and said,
"How am I going to get permission to do this?" And so he
was the one who introduced me to getting permissions. So I
began to write to Mrs. Fisher, and she was enthusiastic and
she sent me an enthusiastic letter. So I included these
letters that she sent me, with her hearty approval of me
doing the book, to the publishers and to the agents, and
they did nothing. And she said, "I called the agent, I
talked to the agent, my agent, and he would do nothing for
me." She would tell him to do something but he wouldn't.
There was no money involved, and I think that the final
rights cost $600 to do the book. I finally got ahold of a
person at Macmillan, sent them a sample of what I intended
to do and $600, and they said okay.
ZIEGLER: Is that a fairly common problem for small
presses? Difficulty in getting permission because maybe
it's not a big, money-making project?
GERRY: I think maybe that's the reason. But they would
57
never answer my letters. I had to finally get them on the
phone. I wanted to do another story of hers called
"Feminine Ending, " which is really a beautiful sort of love
story. So I started out again — now knowing how to get
permission--to do this book with her letter of approval,
and I gave up. They finally traced the people who I
thought had the permission, but they didn't have the record
of it. I gave up.
A. J. Corrigan, A Sharp Criticism [of Nineteenth
Century Letter-Forms] , that was another little booklet that
I did. I had just got my first decent Linotype face called
Fairfield, and I tried it out on that. That's still in
print.
Sam Davis, The Typographical Howitzer. Everybody does
The Typographical Howitzer. It was one of my first books;
it wasn't very good.
ZIEGLER: That was a fun story to read.
GERRY: Yeah. It wasn't a very good book. I bound it
myself. The covers were much too thick, they were like
plywood. Jane Apostol and I did this [Will Bradley] . I
met her through her sister and I said, "You know, I'm
looking for things that people have written." She said,
"Well, I wrote this thing about Will Bradley." And since
then she ' s written quite a few other things and been
published all over. So we did this little Will Bradley
58
booklet. Grant Dahlstrom knew Will Bradley when he was out
here — he lived in California at the end of his life and
frequented Grant's shop--and Grant loaned me a number of
cuts that I could use that Bradley had done for him.
The Everyday Gourmet was a little cookbook I did for
some friends of mine [Daniel and Betty Bailey] when I was
going around seeking material for people to give me to
print. I would ask everybody I knew, and they said, "Well,
we'll do a cookbook for you." So they did.
ZIEGLER: Did you do the illustrations for that?
GERRY: Yes, and those were pen drawings. Usually I
illustrate them myself, because, after all, I went to art
school and why should I waste my free talent? I would like
to have other artists sometimes, but usually when I try to
get somebody to do it, they have so many reasons why they
can't or they don't do it the way I want that I end up
doing it myself, which is just laziness and ego probably.
ZIEGLER: You should give yourself credit in the books
though.
GERRY: Oh, I think I do.
ZIEGLER: As I looked at them, often it looked like your
style and I thought you had probably illustrated it, but I
couldn't find where it said.
GERRY: "Written, directed, and produced by" is sort of
annoying. I mean, my name's in there once already.
59
[laughter]
Pall [W.] Bohne, A Unique 1824 Columbian Press. This
was a press that Ernie Lindner got, and we had it at a
bookfair at the Ambassador [Hotel]. Ernie was showing it
off. It has some unique thing about it which I can't
remember, and Pall wrote a little article and we printed
it. That was just an eight-page booklet.
Walt [Walter] Stanchfield is an artist I worked with.
ZIEGLER: At [Walt] Disney Studio?
GERRY: Yes, he's been at Disney even longer than I have.
He moved away to the Santa Ynez Valley and did a lot of
woodcuts. And I said, "Well, woodcuts are my medium. I
print woodcuts. Let's do a book." Oh, I know. Then he
said, "I have these poems I've written." And I said, "Oh,
really. That's good." So in order to get around him and
his poetry, I said, "Make me some woodcuts to go with the
poetry and I'll print the book," thinking I wouldn't hear
from him for a couple of years, if ever. And in about a
month all the woodcuts arrived plus the poetry. I printed
this on a handpress. It was the first time that I had used
an Albion hand-held press that Lindner loaned me. It was a
terrible job. It took me a whole month working about eight
to twelve hours a day every day of the week to do that, to
print that book . I don ' t know about handpresses . I ' ve got
another one now.
60
ZIEGLER: Is it pretty hard to print woodcuts on any kind
of press?
GERRY: I was very lucky with Walt's. Both books of his I
did were woodcuts that printed very well. That was just
luck. Usually they would be — Of course, I used lots of
ink.
The Black Cat, Edgar Allan Poe. This was one where I
tried to encourage another illustrator to do the
illustration for me. It was another Disney artist. He did
the illustrations; I had to do the linoleum cutting from
his drawings.
ZIEGLER: And who was that?
GERRY: Alfred [W.] Wilson. He's now retired in Santa
Barbara.
Out of the West: [Poems by William Ever son, Gary
Snyder, Philip Levine, Clayton Eshleman, and Jerome
Rothenberg] . This was of California poets, published by
the Lord John Press. I think we talked a little bit about
that before.
Here's another Bunston Quayles, Under Three Inches.
That was a little — When I was working with Pat [Patrick
Reagh] and they had a little open house at Dawson's
[Bookshop], I just kind of whipped that out for the people
that were going to attend this miniature bookfair. Glen
thought it was so nice he wanted me to reprint the darn
61
thing. And, of course, the type had all been distributed
on it. I really did it against my will.
ZIEGLER: I saw a drawing that I think you did for, I
believe, a catalog of Dawson's that showed the big fat man
relaxing in his easy chair with the little tiny miniature
book that he was examining.
GERRY: Right. So far I've done quite a number of their
miniature-book catalogs. In fact I'm working on one right
now.
[Edmund Routledge's] Boy's Book of Fireworks was just
kind of a silly idea of something that was in the public
domain.
ZIEGLER: And you did the illustrations there?
GERRY: Yes. [Roy Williams's] Vaporisms, that was the
first book I printed in Laguna [Beach] using modern
machinery, using a Linotype and the vertical press. Roy
Williams was a Walt Disney story man, and he wrote all
these two-liners about death and he-- Humorous two-line
what? Couplets. And he would leave them on my desk. So I
decided to print them and pass it around to the people.
Special Recipes for Special People. That was the
cookbook I couldn ' t remember by Vera Ricci . There ' s
another person who wanted to do a miniature book. I met
her through Pall Bohne, and they could never quite get
around to it. She couldn't do it herself, so I said, "I'm
62
interested in doing a book." She said, "Oh, good." She
sent me about fifteen hundred recipes for a recipe book. I
said, "I cannot do fifteen hundred recipes." Try to whip
it down to ten or twelve." Or how many are in the book.
So she did that and she was really nice to work with. Wore
her out doing the proofreading.
Carey Bliss called me when I was in Fallbrook to do
some books for the Zamorano [Club] get-together in '78.
One of them was I Remember Robinson Jeffers by Ward
Ritchie. That was done in my shop in Fallbrook, and I
think they were all sewn by hand. Could I have sewn them
all by hand? I think I did. I did it in Electra type,
which is one of the types Ward had used. I tried to force
a certain design I liked. I tried to force it on this job
over and over. I tried to force this design I'd seen in
this book I thought was so swell, and it wouldn't fit. So
I ended up with what I got.
Grant Dahlstrom, Master Printer: A Tribute on His
Seventy- fifth Birthday. This was a secret book that Jake
didn ' t want anybody to know about .
ZIEGLER: As a surprise for Grant?
GERRY: As a surprise. I printed it in secret in
Fallbrook. I was on the spot. I really felt that I was on
the spot, because I was the one who had once been Grant's
apprentice. His printer's devil was now going to print
63
this book as tribute to him on his seventy-fifth
birthday. I really felt on the spot. But by restraining
myself and not putting in all the different types that I
had, as he had told me not to, and not putting too much ink
on the type, as he had told me not to, it came out pretty
well. I think he was pleased.
ZIEGLER: Did you do the patterned paper for the cover of
that?
GERRY: Right. I did that on a linoleum cut, and then I
repeated it and pasted it up and I had a local printer print
the covers offset. Mel Kavin bound it at Kater Crafts.
Grant Dahlstrom at Seventy- five; More Tributes. Jake
Zeitlin claimed that the article Ward had given me for
Grant Dahlstrom, Master Printer: A Tribute at Seventy-five
was not the article that he had intended him to give me.
So for the Zamorano get-together, Jake printed this, which
he said was the correct article that Ward should have given
me. It was printed by the New Ampersand Press. It was a
booklet that Dawson's and Jake, I think, contributed
towards .
ZIEGLER: Tell me about the New Ampersand Press.
GERRY: That was a joke of Jake's, because Grant had had
his private press called the Ampersand Press for years, and
one day Grant discovered somebody else had an Ampersand
Press. So whether there was a battle or whether Grant just
64
dropped out and didn't have the Ampersand Press anymore, I
don't know. But Jake thought that that would be a joke.
And the book. Grant Dahlstrom, Master Printer; A Tribute on
His Seventy-fifth Birthday was also by the New Ampersand
Press. It was an inside joke of Jake's.
ZIEGLER: And somewhere I saw a logo for that, a very
elegant ampersand. Did you do that logo?
GERRY: Was it on the title page? Did it have a little
border around it?
ZIEGLER: I don't actually remember now.
GERRY: I know I had one on the title page. Helen [Slater]
Dahlstrom [1905-1985: Memorial Addresses Given August 30,
1985] . This was a memorial that they asked me to print. I
printed it damp on very thin paper, and it didn't back up
very well. It was what various people had said. Jake had
said something at her funeral, and Mrs. [Helen Carter]
Brown had said something. There were a few other people
there, and it was just their tributes to her.
Mark Nicoll- Johnson, he's a poet and a distant
relative of mine. So I printed a poetry book for him [3 X
3; Nine Poems from Los Angeles]. I published it.
Marion Kronfeld, Designs Cut for Plantin Press
Calendars, 1941 to 1946. This also is what I figure is one
of my major publishing efforts. How it came about-- Oh, I
met her through Mrs. Ricci and I went to visit her. She
65
showed me some of the work she'd done for the Plantin Press
without me even asking. I don't know why. Then I talked
to Mrs. Marks, Lillian Marks of the Plantin Press, and she
said that she still had a lot of good cuts that Marion had
cut in linoleum and had cut in wood. So I got the idea for
the book, and I got Mrs. Marks to approve and got Marion to
approve all the cuts. Marion Kronfeld still had the
original calendars. You know, calendars are the first
things you throw away, right? On January 1. But she still
had kept them because she had done the artwork for them.
So I was able to reproduce from those the cuts that had
been lost. And I did this book of her artwork. It's still
in print. It never sold very well. I thought that if
anybody had been interested in the Plantin Press they'd
want that book. Still have quite a few for sale. I
thought it was one of my best efforts.
Gladys Taber, Stillmeadow Christmas. She was a
woman's magazine writer. My wife [Mary Palmer Gerry] liked
cocker spaniels and Christmas, so it was like a Christmas
card.
ZIEGLER: Did you do the illustrations for that?
GERRY: Yes. I think there was a dog running in that with
a piece of ribbon in its mouth. I think it was a wood
engraving .
ZIEGLER: I really liked that.
66
GERRY: Type. Vance Gerry, the Weather Bird Press. That
was from part of my selling efforts of making the press a
commercial enterprise by having a type book, which I took
around and gave to various advertising people in Laguna.
Nobody was ever interested.
Restful Reading [for Young and Old, Designed to Banish
Care and Alleviate Cynicism, Decorously Illustrated with
Cuts] . That was just a sort of foolish bunch of linoleum
cuts I did of some nineteenth-century poems for kids. Like
taking excerpts from nineteenth-century kids' books,
children's books.
Distributing Type or the Just Art of Throwing In. We
talked about that when I worked as an apprentice. The
tedious time I'd spent distributing type. I printed that
for the Rounce and Coffin Club in 1975. And it had some
drawings. I'd seen a lot of-- At that time I first became
interested in Edward Ardizzone, the English illustrator. I
was trying to emulate him. It's best to try to be
yourself, because I couldn't! No matter how hard I tried I
couldn't be like Edward Ardizzone. So they ended up the
way they are .
That's [J. P. Devine's] Gatsby, No Show Dog, Found a
Home in Hollywood Anyway. Jake kept saying that this was
his last publication, and it may well have been. It was
for the Zamorano or Roxburghe Club meeting. It was a story
67
that appeared in the newspaper about this dog that roamed
on La Cienega Boulevard, I think.
ZIEGLER: Who did this silhouette of the dog behind the — ?
GERRY: I'm trying to think if I did it, but I don't — I
think Jake had that from somewhere. We had an offset
printer print that, overprint that. No, he printed it
first, then Pat printed the type on top of that, I think.
A Letter from Mark Twain concerning the Paige
Compositor. A fellow I worked with was nuts about Mark
Twain. He showed me a book of his letters. And in this
book I found this one about how Twain was enthusiastic
about this typesetting machine he had been investigating
for years and years.
ZIEGLER: He went broke on that didn't he?
GERRY: Right.
ZIEGLER: Because that was the new technology that didn't
take off.
GERRY: Right, right. I had some new type called De Roos
I'd purchased, and I wanted to try it out. So I did this
for the Rounce and Coffin Club, and it was not too bad.
The English Box Hose Common Press was something that
I'd printed for Ernie Lindner to have at a bookfair where
he was showing off a facsimile press he had had made out of
wood. I think it had been made in England. It was a
wooden press that would really print. This was just
68
telling something about his press. I had poison oak all
over me when I did that job, and it was very difficult.
Sydney Smith, A Recipe for Salad; [A Rhyme] . This was
the poem Sydney Smith wrote about salad. I did my first
food and drink-- And I got the idea to do a whole series.
The whole series has only gone up to six.
ZIEGLER: I wasn't sure if I'd seen the whole series.
Could you just briefly name the items?
GERRY: Oh, let's see. There was salad. And then I did
one which was by Ford Madox Ford. A little excerpt from
one of his books about eating a sandwich in the front lines
in World War I [Sandwiches and Coffee] . And then I did two
on wine, California wines [Mission Grapes and Zinfandel
Grapes] . Elva Marshall did some etchings which are pasted
in. The sandwiches has a pochoir illustration. And then I
did two others by Dela Lutes--Dela Lutes was a food
writer. One was called Vegetable Soup and one was called
Plum Pudding. And it had the recipe and told you a little
something about it. So that's all I can remember.
ZIEGLER: What about the one on chili [Chile: Being a Texas
Recipe] ? And there was one on borscht [Borscht: Being a
Russian Recipe] .
GERRY: Oh, I keep thinking I'll do another one on chili.
But those were done much before, just sort of ephemeral
stuff to hand to your friends.
69
[William Bradford's] The First Thanksgiving, that was
just something to hand out to my friends at Thanksgiving.
Just a project for printing a piece of ephemera.
ZIEGLER: Did you do the illustration there?
GERRY : Yes .
ZIEGLER: Was that a linoleum cut?
GERRY: Right, linoleum. Of the pilgrim with the
cornstalk. I may have had some new type I had wanted to
try out too, I'm not sure.
Chile: Being a Texas Recipe, that was a piece of
ephemera. There was a fellow [Danny Alguire] I worked with
who was a Texan. He and his brother would continue to
write back and forth to each other about how to make
chili. And my friend that I worked with named Vasily
Davidovich told me about borscht and how borscht was, you
know, Russian. Borscht was not like Jewish borscht--this
was different. It was Russian borscht! And he had to keep
emphasizing it. So all right, give me the recipe! So I
took it home. I said, "Well, it's just vegetable soup."
But it was good vegetable soup.
Selected War Poems of Wilfred Owen. This is where I
had a friend [Dale Barnhart] of mine, an artist, and I said
we should do something. He had been away and came back and
we made contact. And I said, "We should do something
together." He was a good artist. He could do linoleum
70
cuts, and he had done a lot of prints just with linoleum.
So I said, "What should we do?" And he said, "Remember all
those drawings I did about Wilfred Owen during the Vietnam
War?" He had made a lot of drawings illustrating the poems
of Wilfred Owen. I said, "Oh, sure, but we've got to have
them on linoleum. I can't reproduce the drawings." "Okay,
I'll cut them." So he adapted these drawings that he'd
made to linoleum, and I set the poems. I got the
permission from whoever has the permission to do Owen's
poems, and Pat Reagh printed it for me. A large- format,
expensive book sells for $135. A tour de force, bound by
Bela Blau, and I have lots of them left if anybody is
interested.
ZIEGLER: The printing of the illustrations looks like it
must have been very complicated, because it's in several
colors, and so they have to go through the press several
times and be lined up each time.
GERRY: Yes, and the amount of ink it took was amazing.
They had to slip-sheet them.
71
TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
MAY 4, 1989
ZIEGLER: Okay, it's May 4, and we're here for the second
interview with Vance Gerry. He has before him the list
that we've put together of the books he's printed. And I
wonder if you could go on conunenting on the books there.
GERRY: Sure. This is Izaak Walton. It's a poem from
Walton's The Complete Angler, "Piscator, and the Angler's
Wish." It was just a small, little tiny pamphlet I hand
set in Deepdene one time. I was waiting for an electrician
to come, and he never came. I got this done, as a matter
of fact, because of that. That was in '67. It was just a
very small pamphlet.
ZIEGLER: Is that typical of the way you do printing
projects? That you sort of do it when you're waiting for
something or have some spare time like that?
GERRY: Yes. But I think that particular one was just to
fill the time while I was waiting around for him.
ZIEGLER: Are you especially fond of fishing yourself?
GERRY: No, I was just interested in the book, because
people had talked so much about Walton's book. And I had
read it, and it was sort of a peaceful thing. But I don't
know anything about fishing, nor do I fish.
ZIEGLER: I've never read it, but I've heard that it's a
lot of fun to read.
72
GERRY: It's sort of a peaceful book. Or, as it says in
its title, a contemplative book. Now, this Housman was
another little poem that I set, probably hand set, just for
fun. With Rue My Heart Is Laden, by A. E. Housman. And it
was not much of anything. Fiona Macleod in The Hour of the
Rose was taken from-- William Sharp was the author, who
could apparently only write under the name of Fiona Macleod
and wrote very colorful nature things. This was actually
pointed out to me in a book by Clifton Fadiman [Reading
I've Liked: A Personal Selection Drawn from Two Decades of
Reading and Reviewing] , the excerpts from his [Sharp's]
writings. And I did that one printed in large Janson, 24-
point Janson. I barely had enough to print one page at a
time. And it only had three pages, I think. I did it in
Pasadena in 1973. I bound it in sort of a plaid, a gray
plaid cloth.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, that was very nice.
GERRY: I thought it was kind of a nice little thing, but
not of much importance. Walt [Walter] Stanchfield was a
fellow artist that I worked with at the [Walt] Disney
Studio. He did a lot of woodcuts. I mean real woodcuts on
the side of a pine board, not to be confused with wood
engravings . These were genuine woodcuts . He was a darn
good artist. So I said, "Give me some cuts, and we'll make
a book out of them." And so I did. I think we only did
73
thirty- five copies. I did it on a Vandercook proof
press. He was at that time retired from the studio. So I
went up to see him at his studio in Solvang, and he signed
all the books for me. There were, I think, thirty- five
copies. It was a large format. It was the very first book
I ever got into the Western Books [Exhibition]. And it was
argued that it wasn't really a book; it was only a
portfolio--even though it was bound- -because it didn't have
any text. But Saul Marks stood up for me, and I got the
book in after all.
ZIEGLER: It seems that they define books even much more
loosely than that nowadays. I saw the recent Western Book
show on display here, and there was quite a variety of
things, portfolio-type things and almost sculptural
bindings. There were one or two examples that were like
that.
GERRY: Yeah. Even school catalogs can qualify, or have at
one time or another. But this was an example of how I
tried to do something original by an original artist. And
I printed directly from the blocks he cut. Now, let's see.
Some Fond Remembrances of a Boy Printer at the Castle
Press, written by myself. This was kind of the first
experience I'd ever had of trying to write something. And
I wrote my memoirs of working with Grant Dahlstrom in 1943
at the Castle Press. I tried to remember the people who
74
worked there and what they had done. It's mostly little
anecdotes about things that happened, what I could
remember. I printed it in 1968. I set it in Caslon on the
Linotype and took it to show Grant one day after I ' d
finished. I think I'd done about twenty-five, maybe fifty,
copies. I don't know if I'd done that many. I showed it
to Grant, and he sort of approved of it. He thought it was
kind of good, but he kept trying to read it while I was
there. So I could tell he must have at least been
interested in what I was going to say.
ZIEGLER: Yeah. [laughter]
GERRY: So he talked apparently to Glen Dawson, and Dawson
called me up. He said, "Do you have any more of those
books? I want to sell some." So I was actually a printer
who was going to sell something he'd printed. I was really
quite honored.
ZIEGLER: So, then, this is the first book that you sold
and the first contact that you had with Dawson's [Book
Shop]?
GERRY: Right, this was the first contact that I had with
Dawson's. And I've worked with them ever since. Very good
to printers, the Dawsons [Glen and Muir] . And some few
months later Peggy Christian — she was a book dealer- -wrote
to me and she said, "Are there any more of those books
available? I've heard about them." I said, "No, but if I
75
printed a second edition, would you be interested?" And
she said, "Oh, sure." So I printed a second edition of
about fifty copies. So it exists in two ways.
ZIEGLER: What changes did you make in the second edition?
GERRY: I think I added the story of Grant Dahlstrom and
his big green Packard car. And I tried to correct my
misspellings and so on. You can tell where the corrections
are because I had monkeyed around on the machine, and so
the corrected lines, set on the Linotype, are a little
narrower than the existing lines. So that's a dead
giveaway. And I didn't make all the corrections I should
have anyway .
ZIEGLER: Who's Peggy Christian?
GERRY: She was a well-known Los Angeles book dealer. A
friend of Jake [Zeitlin]'s, a friend of the Dawson's. I
didn't know her very well. I don't think I'd ever been to
her shop, but she was very respected.
ZIEGLER: Is her bookshop still in existence?
GERRY: No, she died a couple of years ago. [looks at
list] Oh, these were just proofs you saw.
ZIEGLER: Yes. For these I didn't actually see the printed
book. It wasn't at the Clark [Library]. All I saw was the
proofs or the layout. But I'd like to have you talk some
about the completed book.
GERRY: Sure. Okay, this was called Poems , by Teri
76
Ryland. She was the girlfriend of a man who I worked with
at the studio. He talked me into doing it, and I did it.
It was a very small, little pamphlet of some poems. Very
insignificant. I did it because I was trying to make my
own shop pay for itself.
H. Richard Archer, secretary-- This was called, A
Glimpse of the Past from the Minutes of the Rounce and
Coffin Club, printed for members on the club's fiftieth
anniversary. Ty [Tyrus] Harmsen of Occidental [College]
had-- Ty Harmsen got the book of minutes written by Richard
Archer and culled out some of the most amusing things.
Archer was a very amusing minute keeper of the Rounce and
Coffin Club. And I printed those up for the fiftieth
anniversary. I did this while I was with Pat [Patrick]
Reagh in 1981, and I think it was printed on the
vertical. I set it on the Linotype machine-- Janson.
ZIEGLER: I've read some wonderful anecdotes about the
Rounce and Coffin Club. It sounds like that group has so
much fun together!
GERRY: Yeah. Well, Ward [Ritchie] has written a lot of
things that make it seem like that. Certainly in their
day, when Ward and Grant and the big three were all going,
they had a lot of fun. The minutes that Archer kept are
very amusing. The times, the good times that they had. We
don't do much anymore, in that way, at the Rounce and
77
Coffin.
ZIEGLER: Oh, well, that's too bad.
GERRY: To concentrate on the Western Books Exhibition is
our main function now.
A Visit from Saint Nicholas by Clement [C] Moore. I
did that as a little Christmas booklet. It was done in
1966, hand set in Bembo narrow. I think I did seven or
eight copies for it, just to be printing something. I did
that in Pasadena, in the print shop I had in the basement.
ZIEGLER: So this is a real bibliographic rarity!
GERRY: Oh, I guess so. I don't — It wasn't — It's hard to
say. I'll leave that to the bibliographers. Mary
Elizabeth, this was a little thing I did for the relatives
of my niece when she was just a little kid. It was just
this silly thing, but the relatives loved it.
Christmas at Manor Farm, excerpted from The Pickwick
Papers . Yeah, that was a Christmas card done in the form
of a small, little book.
ZIEGLER: As I remember, there was a delightful drawing in
that of a thin man and a fat man standing by the fireplace
holding glasses of some sort of liquor.
GERRY: Right, right.
ZIEGLER: You did that?
GERRY: I did the illustrations. They were line drawings
made into photoengravings. And I suppose-- No, I think
78
that was before I discovered [Edward] Ardizzone. But I was
doing the Crosshatch pen-and-ink-type drawings. And that
little drawing came out pretty good.
ZIEGLER: Yeah. I seem to remember seeing the same drawing
in some Rounce and Coffin Club stuff. Do you remember it
being used by the Rounce and Coffin Club later?
GERRY: Yeah, we used it for an announcement of some event
that we were going to do. I can't remember which one. And
somehow I got the assignment to print the announcement. I
did it at Pat's. And, of course, Pat had all those cuts
stored and cataloged. So it was very easy to find, and it
seemed to fit the occasion.
Now, A Book of Poems; Cruachan by Baxter Sperry.
Baxter Sperry was a woman I'd known in the army, and she
was a writer. She contacted me many years later and wanted
to do some printing of her own, and so I sort of helped her
a little bit. Only by mail. I never actually saw her
print shop, I don't believe.
ZIEGLER: She has her own press, the Laurel Hill Press,
doesn't she?
GERRY: Right. And she, just a few years ago, was
instrumental in getting the two of us a joint show at the
[California] State Library of our work. She apparently
pestered them into showing us off. And there she showed
some of her better works. She never became a very good
79
printer, but she — The best things she did were the
drawings she made of old buildings around Sacramento and
that area, with the history of them. Then she hand-colored
them and put them in books or sold them separately as
prints. They were really very beautiful. I mean, they
were kind of naive, but when you saw them all together in
the show, they were terribly impressive. So this was a
book I'd done for her in 1966 of her poems. I can't
remember why I did it. Or maybe she paid me for it. I
don't think there were too many, maybe thirty copies, maybe
less than that. And it was bound in a cloth which I got at
the yardage store and set in narrow Bembo. Not a bad
job. A perfect job of perfect binding, and the pages are
probably all falling out by now!
Bela Thandar, that was an anagram. And the title of
the book was The Last Time I Dined with the King. It was a
book of limericks that we'd found in Playboy. And one of
the artists at the studio, whose anagram was Bela Thandar- -
ZIEGLER: Who was Bela Thander?
GERRY: Bela Thandar was Dale Barnhart. He had made these
illustrations for these filthy limericks. I cut them in
linoleum. I think we sold it to a few members of the
studio, probably did twenty copies or twenty- five copies.
ZIEGLER: Oh! I never got to see the completed one of
that. I just saw the proofs of the limericks. I never saw
80
any illustrations.
GERRY: I wonder if I even have a copy myself. But I think
it was limited to about twenty-five copies. I was still
doing everything on the kitchen table then.
[Some] English Christmas Customs by Dorothy Spicer.
Another excerpt from some writings of Dorothy Spicer. It
was a Christmas card for 1979. Yeah, that one you have
there. It has a linoleum cut and two wood engravings, all
of which I thought were fairly successful.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, they are. I'm looking at the book right
now. Could you tell me which is the linoleum cut and which
are the wood engravings?
GERRY: The birds in the middle of the book eating the
seed--that was a linoleum cut. And then the bundle of
twigs on the title page was a wood engraving. It was set
in Granj on- -small Granjon, 8 to 10 point. I can't
remember .
ZIEGLER: And then, also, this of the cake and--
GERRY: That was a wood engraving. It was primarily a
Christmas card. It exists today because I must have
thought I had more friends than I did, because I still have
about twenty- five of them.
ZIEGLER: How did you do the cover paper for this? Is it
type ornaments of a Christmas bell, and then you just
repeated the design?
81
GERRY: Yeah, I think I'd actually cast those types on my
Thompson typecaster myself. So I was able to cast enough
to fill enough paper to make a cover.
ZIEGLER: Do you often cast type ornaments for yourself?
GERRY: No. I had always thought I would some day design
my own typeface and cut it and cast it. And I bought an
old Thompson with that in mind. The most I've ever done
with it is to cast some Linotype decorative material from
Linotype matrices. I really haven't used it very much.
ZIEGLER: What are some of the ornaments that you have
cast? I might have seen them.
GERRY: Well, they were all from Linotype mattes, so
they ' re in the Linotype catalog . I think I bought some
directly from Linotype, and then a lot of them sort of came
with the machine. The machine had been owned by some Los
Angeles typefounder who cast nothing but Linotype material,
including type from Linotype mattes. So I really haven't
done much with it. I gave up trying to be a typefounder
because I was unsuccessful in making the punches. I
couldn't quite figure out how to do that correctly.
ZIEGLER: Do you ever think you might try it again
sometime?
GERRY: No, I've discovered a cutter, a matrix engraver in
India called Experto. They sent letters around to everyone
they knew who had a typecasting machine. They would be
82
glad to make the mattes from your drawing. So that is kind
of a cop-out, but it's much easier to make the drawing from
which they will make me a matrix than for me to try and
file out a punch and press it into an aluminum matrix. So
you see, I've sort of become lazy.
ZIEGLER: Did you say in India?
GERRY: Yes.
ZIEGLER: Do they do a lot of that in India? I never quite
realized--
GERRY: I guess some of the technology of the West that we
no longer use is sort of passed into the hands of the Third
World, and in the Third World they do a lot of it. I guess
India's part of the Third World. They still do a number of
technologies which we don't do here anymore. That just
happens to be one of them. But they still use a great deal
of letterpress printing in India and Africa.
Audrey Arel lanes, a keepsake for the Bookplate
Collectors Society. That was a commercial job I did for
Audrey, who is president of the Bookplate Collectors
Society. I can't remember much about it unless that was
the one that had greetings in many different languages. I
can't remember. I did a couple of things for her.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, I remember seeing keepsakes for several
different years for that society. I don't know if I got
them all in the stack of cards. There were quite a few
83
things I didn't realize I had missed in making the cards.
Could you tell me a little bit more about the society?
GERRY: Apparently it goes back to the twenties, or maybe
earlier. Audrey took over managing the club, which is an
international club--I hope I'm getting this right--for book
collectors. It's for people who make bookplates as well as
for people who collect bookplates. Their subject is
bookplates, period. She puts out a yearly book which is a
beautiful job, in which she tips in herself many examples
of bookplates. It's sort of really an annual. Then she
does a newsletter that comes out I think once a month, or
maybe quarterly--I 'm not sure- -concerning bookplates.
Bookplates in the News this book is called. And she still
runs the society from her kitchen table. I've seen her
working there many times, tipping in those bookplates. I'm
not sure what the membership is. Five hundred people or
more . You ' d have to ask her .
ZIEGLER: Is she one of your neighbors in Pasadena?
GERRY: I think she lives in San Gabriel, but she's a
member of the Rounce and Coffin Club. She's had me do work
for her off and on for many years now. Whenever I have a
print shop and she and the society have some money, then we
get together.
Four Common Plants: Linoleum Cuts and the Text
Describing Oleander, Plumbago, Wild Cucumber, and Yarrow.
84
I printed that in 1978, and it was my first herbal, would
you call it? I engraved these plants I found in the
backyard and cut them into linoleum and printed them. It
took me a number of years just to do four of them.
ZIEGLER: I'm sorry I didn't see the completed book. It
looked like they were beautiful engravings of the plants,
judging from the prints.
GERRY: One I tried to do in two colors didn't come out too
well. The others, just printed in black, are not too
bad. I'm kind of proud of them. It took a great deal of
time to get it done. And I bound it in wrappers, and
probably only fifty copies, I think.
ZIEGLER: I forget. Did you write the text on that, also?
GERRY: The text I borrowed from different sources. I
confess, I didn't write it, no.
ZIEGLER: How many herbals would you say you've done? I've
seen several. There was Four Weeds. And then you
mentioned that you're going to work on one soon called
Seaside Plants.
GERRY: Yes. And my Seaside Plants book will be more
ambitious. I hope to do about sixteen plants and cut them
in linoleum. First I was going to try lithography, and I
couldn't get that to work. I had already done the etchings
of Four Weeds. So I thought, "Well, I'll go back to
linoleum, because I feel more secure with linoleum. And
85
maybe kind of take some cues from Henry Evans and how he is
able to get the plant without a lot of-- Within two colors,
or so, he could get the whole thing. And I was hoping I
could discipline myself enough to do something similar.
Evans can capture the plant, and you can say the plant is
authentic — it's just not an artist's dream. He can do it
in two colors. So that's pretty ambitious of me to think I
can do that, but I'm going to try. And in this case, I
don't think I'll write it. I think I'll get the botanist
Charles Leland Richardson, who wrote Four Weeds for me.
Richardson is a botanist, but he has always worked in the
motion picture business because he hopes to get rich enough
to afford to become a botanist. But he's very good. He
likes the subject, and he's just right for my sort of
work. So I think he'll do this Seaside Plant book for
me. I'll do the cuts.
And then we have Edward Ardizzone, On the Illustrating
of Books . That was one of my more recent books. It was an
article printed in [The] Private Library journal. It was a
small article, and Ardizzone talked about himself as an
illustrator. And I thought, "I like Ardizzone. This is
just the right size for me to make a small book." Tricking
myself by believing the job is going to be easy because
it's going to be small. I'm always a sucker for taking on
projects because I think they're going to be easy, and they
86
never are. Anyway, it turned out to be a very successful
book. I got permission from Ardizzone's agent for the
article as well as the drawings. One of my better books, I
think.
ZIEGLER: And you were saying you especially admire
Ardizzone as an illustrator.
GERRY: Right. Yes. I have many times tried to copy
Ardizzone's style. Unsuccessfully, but I've tried. So
yes, I do admire him a lot.
ZIEGLER: When did you first discover Ardizzone?
GERRY: Oh, I suppose I had always seen his work. But one
time at a bookfair, I think in '74, one of the dealers had a
complete set of Ardizzone's illustrations for the Cambridge
[University Press] book called A Stickful of Nonpareil [by
George Scur field] about the adventures of a young man, the
remembrances of a young man, at the Cambridge press. He'd
done the illustrations. They were all concerning the
printshop and the young fellows working at the printshop. I
thought I would like to have them, but they were too
expensive, I thought, then. But, anyway, that's when I
really became interested in Ardizzone, at that point.
Pasadena centennial map, that was done for the
Pasadena centennial. I think that was a Junior League
job. The Junior League had me do the map because somehow I
had gotten a reputation as a mapmaker because of the little
87
book I'd done called Topography of the Castle Press, circa
1943, [and Other Dim Recollections] . Now everyone came to
me thinking I was a map drawer. I wasn't really. I just
learned by doing.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, well, you do do wonderful maps. You say on
them they're not navigational maps, they're not to scale.
But they're beautiful and they're entertaining. I saw a
map that you did, "A Bibliophile's Map to Los Angeles" or
something like that.
GERRY: Yes, I did that with John Bidwell, who probably was
the one who said, "Oh, you know how to draw maps because
you did the topography map of the Castle Press." So I said
okay. Then we decided which items we should put in. Like,
for instance, UCLA ought to be in there because that would
be of interest to international bibliophiles. And we put
in museums and colleges. Anything we thought might be of
interest. Also places where the international bibliophiles
were going to, such as the ranch up there up near Ojai
[Rancho Mi Solar] --they were going to visit this ranch for
a barbecue- -and this hotel they stayed in. So it came out
pretty good. Although Pat always complained that I hadn't
drawn it to the right shape and he had to fold it in an
awkward way to go into the book . I think I ' ve done a
couple of other maps besides that.
ZIEGLER: There was a map that you did for the endpapers of
88
the Lord John Press book Out of the West; [Poems by William
Everson, Gary Snyder, Philip Levlne, Clayton Eshleman, and
Jerome Rothenberq] .
GERRY: Oh, yeah. I'm thinking more of a pictorial. I
know I did another one. I can't think of it right now.
Let's see, William H. Butler, Nothing To Wear. This
was a poem about this poor — It was a nineteenth-century
poem about this poor girl who didn't have enough to wear.
And, of course, she had closets full of clothes, but not
just the right thing that she wanted. It was published by
Lorson's bookshop [Lorson's Books and Prints] in Fullerton.
ZIEGLER: Could you tell me a little more about Lorson's
Book Shop?
GERRY: [James E.] Lorson started his bookshop in Orange
County, in Fullerton. Oh, I would say he first contacted me
back in the early seventies because he heard I was a printer
and he wanted to handle some of my books. He's been very good
about that to all of us since then. And he had to-- He ran
his bookshop part-time in Fullerton for a number of years. He
himself was employed in the electronics business. He was
always looking forward to his retirement. Fortunately, he was
laid off and he decided to do the bookshop full-time. His
wife [Joan Lorson] runs the half that handles modern--I don't
want to say contemporary--children' s books and some gift
items. He runs the part of the bookshop which is the
89
antiquarian department. And they've made a success of
it. He one time said he wanted to be the best antiquarian
book dealer in Fullerton, and I think he finally got it.
He also handles work by artists. He handles the work of an
etching artist named Scott Fitzgerald and some watercolors
by other artists. He's very helpful. Nice book dealer.
This was a book I did for them, and we struggled
along. It was printed while I worked with Pat Reagh. I
think it was set — I think Pat set it on the Monotype, and
we had some trouble with getting the right colored paper
for the covering. In some ways it's very successful. I
did two wood engravings for it that came out pretty good
for a miniature book. It is a miniature book.
ZIEGLER: We're still talking about Nothing To Wear?
GERRY: Nothing To Wear. I think that its cover was
somehow not too satisfactory, but it's not a bad-looking
book, not a bad-looking miniature. A lot of people don't
like miniatures. I don't like miniatures. But every once
in a while I'll do one, in spite of it. [laughter]
ZIEGLER: You say you don't like them. Why not?
GERRY: Oh, because they're small and hard to do, and it's
very hard to set the type. The only way you can do it
right is to set the type by hand. And I always try to
force it on the Linotype. At that narrow a measure it's
very difficult to get any decent spacing. A miniature book
90
should really be set by hand, in 4-point type or — And
nobody wants to set anything in 4-point type.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, I can imagine! [laughter] Having
struggled with those little tiny pieces of type myself in
the printshop downstairs. And, of course, that wasn't that
small. Some people solve the problem by doing miniature
books with, like, four letters to a page, and that sort of
thing.
GERRY: Or else they'll set it large and then have it
reduced by photoengraving. But in the miniature book
field, that's considered cheating.
ZIEGLER: Oh! Yeah, I would tend to think so, too.
GERRY: Also, when you're set up to print large books, you
don't want to fool with small books. Really a person that
does miniature books is usually set up to do-- He has a
small press, a small paper cutter, a small little
bindery. Everything is small. Somehow when you try to
force it through a shop that is equipped [to do] a 6" X 9"
book, it's sort of difficult.
ZIEGLER: William Cheney did a lot of miniatures. Was he
really pretty much exclusively a miniature printer?
GERRY: No, Will did a lot of printing that was not
miniature. He tended to be on the small side. Small
pamplets, small booklets, like 4 1/2" X 6". But he did
larger things. But mostly he was on the small things. He
91
did do many miniatures--! mean, small miniatures that were
1" X 3/4" — or did a nice — They were all set with type. A
beautiful one he did of bookplates all set in tiny, tiny
little ornaments in a very small format. He was a real
miniature guy. Miniature book printer.
ZIEGLER: I think a miniature book is like an adult toy.
It has some of that same appeal.
GERRY: Yeah. When you see them all on display, it's like
looking at a dollhouse, and you're fascinated by
miniatures.
ZIEGLER: I bet it must be fascinating, for the same
reason, to see a printshop set up for printing miniatures
with little tiny presses.
GERRY: By little, I mean the Pilot press. Or maybe a 5" X
8", which would be a little bit smaller. That's about a 7"
X 9", 6" X 9", isn't it?
ZIEGLER: You mean that one that I had so much trouble
with?
GERRY: Yeah, that's a 6" X 9". You could print four pages
of a miniature very comfortably on that, and you might even
stretch it out to eight. But four would go very
comfortably on that. I think a lot of miniature people do
two pages at a time.
ZIEGLER: These were some things that I didn't manage to
see, but I saw listings of them in your catalogs.
92
GERRY: Okay, these were probably books I proposed to do
and announced that I would do, but then never did.
ZIEGLER: Well, maybe you can tell me which you did do and
which never got done.
GERRY: Okay. I always wanted to do a miniature book on
bibliographic abbreviations. I consulted with Ed [Edwin
H.] Carpenter and with Jim Lorson about which bibliographic
abbreviations it should include, and I had a pretty good
list. And I even sent a couple of sample pages, but then
somehow I lost interest. I may get interested again, but I
just sort of got off on some other project. And nobody was
banging on the door saying, "Quick, quick, when are you
going to get it done?" Nobody ever begged me to do it.
ZIEGLER: Well, I think it might be worth finishing
sometime. Maybe reference librarians would use it.
GERRY: Carry it in their pocket.
ZIEGLER: This is The Day the Pig Fell in the Well by John
Cheever--we talked about that before- -for the Lord John
Press. That we did in two versions, the deluxe and the
regular. And I bound twenty- six of them, I think, that
were lettered. Each one had a different letter designating
it, and they were bound and put in slipcases, which I
believe I made. It was very ambitious. That was when I
had a printshop full-time and I could do that sort of
thing. In 1978. The book turned out very well. Some of
93
my very best typesetting for a very good author. And I
think Herb [Yellin] always liked that book, too.
ZIEGLER: I remember seeing some sketches for that. As I
said, that one I didn't see the completed book, but a
latticework design- -
GERRY: It has a latticework design on the title page.
Then one of the versions — I think the inexpensive version--
had a drawing of this old house where the story took place
on the cover. I think that whole cover was sort of
latticework, if I recall. But I remember drawing that
house. You may have seen the drawings. I must have drawn
it a thousand times, and then probably picked the wrong
one.
Proud Flesh by James Purdy was another Lord John Press
I did in 1980. I had set the chapter headings, the heading
of the plays, very low on the page. And after it was all
printed, it looked blank. So I proposed to Herb Yellin
that I put in some illustrations in these blank openings to
the plays. There were about four or six plays. So he said
okay. Then I wore myself out trying to come up with the
right drawings. Then I had to run the sheets through the
press again to imprint those on. And as I look back,
sometimes I think, "Gee, maybe it wasn't so bad if they
were left blank."
ZIEGLER: In any case, I imagine it was a lot of work just
94
lining them up to get the illustration placed right where
the type is.
GERRY: Actually, that part wasn't too bad. [It wasn't]
too hard to do that . Since I ' d proposed the idea to Herb
and he'd accepted it, then I had to come up with the
drawings, and I learned-- They came out very well.
Actually, it was a pretty nice job. Four Common Plants, we
talked about that, didn't we? The linoleum cuts?
ZIEGLER: Yeah, I think we did.
GERRY: Anthony Rizzo, Some Epigrammatical Notes. This was
a background painter at the Disney Studio. He often left
notes on my desk of his own composition, which were a
little obscure.
ZIEGLER: I think you mentioned that was the first thing
you ever printed. Is that right?
GERRY: It was the first book I ever printed. I just kept
collecting these little notes. I printed them one page at
a time and perfect-bound them. The man [Louis Appet] who
later became the business agent for the cartoonists local
union [Screen Cartoonists Guild] taught me how to bind the
book. That was my first experiment with binding.
To a Mouse, Robert Burns, Peach Pit Press. That would
be around the early sixties when I had the Peach Pit Press
in the basement. I think I'd gotten an 8" X 12" Challenge
Gordon platen press, and I printed this on that. And it
95
was an 8 1/2" X 11" format set in large Janson, 24-point
Janson, with some linoleum cuts that I did. It was just a
little book of the poem "To a Mouse." I put a little
glossary in the back of what some of Burns ' s Scottish words
were.
ZIEGLER: I saw where you had done different sketches for
that, one of the mouse in its burrow and one of the plow.
But I don't think I saw the completed one of that, so I
never saw which drawings you used. You cut them in
linoleum, then?
GERRY: You really dug into all that stuff.
ZIEGLER: Well, I looked through your papers at the Clark
and the books of yours that we have there.
GERRY: Plum Pudding by Delia Lutes. This was taken from
one of her books. That was Weather Bird Press Food and
Drink number six. These were small little booklet formats
I decided to do a series on, and I think six was as far as
I got. I have a few waiting to be printed. It's another
one of those projects where I sort of lost interest.
Although they are fairly popular--people like them. Delia
Lutes ' s Vegetable Soup, same thing . That ' s Food and Drink
number five. Sandwiches and Coffee was a very much edited
excerpt from one of Ford Madox Ford's World War I books.
That had a pochoir illustration. That was Food and Drink
number four. Mission Grapes, Food and Drink number two.
96
This I tried to get my friend David Hitchcock to write. I
thought in his retirement he'd be interested in researching
grapes because he liked wine and had been to wine school.
Well, I had a hard time trying to pry Mission Grapes out of
him, which he wrote. And Elva Marshall did the etching,
which I had Tony Kroll print.
ZIEGLER: You did several things for David Hitchcock,
didn't you?
GERRY: Well, he did this for me. I just tried to get him
to write it. Yes, David Hitchcock once ran for a public
office, and I was his printer.
ZIEGLER: Yes, I saw the campaign letter. And then was he
connected with the Hancock Laboratories, that heart valve
place? Or was — ?
GERRY: No, no. They had nothing in common. That was
Warren Hancock who started that company making porcine
heart valves, and also bandages made from pig skin for burn
patients.
ZIEGLER: You also then did some wine bottle labels for
David Hitchcock, didn't you?
GERRY: Yeah, but that was just sort of as a present, just
sort of fun. He's a fellow I've known a long time. But he
knows nothing of printing, and he was not interested in
writing really. It was my imagination that thought he
might like to research this stuff. But he also did Mission
97
and he did Zinfandel Grapes for me for the Food and Drink
series.
ZIEGLER: And tell me a little bit about the artist. Let
me look up her name again, the artist who did the
engravings for that.
GERRY: Oh, Elva Marshall--who has been a longtime editor
at the Castle Press- -is an artist, and she made the
etchings for me of the Zinfandel and the Mission Grapes. I
remember we went out to a vineyard out on Foothill
Boulevard and we looked at grapes and we looked at leaves
and we started a little collection of wine grape leaves,
and so on. We did a lot of research. She made these for
me and she was good, and, of course, couldn't run off as
many as I needed on her etching press. I think these were
like two hundred copies. Tony Droll, a commercial
engraver, he ran them off for me, and they're all tipped
in.
98
TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
^4AY 4, 1989
GERRY: These are Letters concerning D. H. Lawrence. I may
have talked about this before. My aunt, Margaret Fay, her
husband [Eliot Fay] had been a teacher of Romance languages
in a number of different colleges--well, from Northwestern
[University) down to the Citadel in the South — and he was
very fond of Lawrence. He decided he would write a book on
Lawrence, all from the existing written material. This was
published by the Bookman Press, which means — I think — Fay
may have had to pay for part of it himself to be
published. He sent the book off to Dorothy Brett, Mabel
Dodge Luhan, Frieda Lawrence, and one other who had been
friends of Lawrence. This was in the early fifties and
they were all still alive, and they wrote back to him. My
aunt still had these letters in her possession, and I
thought, "Hey, I'll publish some Lawrence stuff!" I mean,
it's very distant, very fringy Lawrence stuff. I published
the letters. I guess there were maybe ten letters.
ZIEGLER: Well, it still should be of considerable interest
to anyone doing a Lawrence biography.
GERRY: Yeah. The letters were written by these friends
and by Lawrence's wife to Fay. So that was about that.
ZIEGLER: I saw where you'd been sketching a portrait of
Lawrence, looking at different photographs of him.
99
GERRY: Oh, in the frontispiece. I had other people draw
it for me too, and I finally ended up doing a Lawrence that
wasn't too good, but it was sort of a fairly effective
title page. I felt very good about publishing that because
it was like new material. It wasn't just a reprint.
Here we have Four Weeds, written by Charles Leland
Richardson. This was my experience with etchings, the
first time I'd ever done any etching or intaglio work. I
had bought an intaglio press from an artist who was moving
and didn't need it anymore. It was just the right size. A
strong man can lift it or a weak man can take it apart and
move it. And it will do a twelve-inch-wide plate. So I
fooled around, and I talked to Richardson. I talked to him
and he said, "Well, we'll do it on weeds." So I said,
"Well, make it simple. Do four weeds." Well, to do four--
I did fifty copies, so that makes two hundred etchings. It
was incredibly tiring to do fifty etchings of each plant.
ZIEGLER: And etchings you can't put through the press at
the same time as type, can you?
GERRY: No, the type was fairly easy to print. But I
printed the book first, and then I imprinted the etchings
onto the sheets. Because obviously there was more a
possibility of going wrong on the etching than there was on
the type. So actually it came out pretty good. And Chuck
Richardson wrote some nice, lighthearted little pieces
100
about the weeds. So that was another herbal book. Like I
say, I don't think I want to do production etching again.
ZIEGLER: You say this is the first time you did it?
GERRY: Right.
ZIEGLER: I would imagine it's very hard. I've never tried
it — just reading descriptions.
GERRY: The difficult part is wiping the plate off. And
even though these were not big plates, it took a lot of
time. Then the plate has to be put in the press every
time, taken out every time. The ink has to be worked into
the intaglio. The surface has to be wiped clean and then
it has to be put back in the press. I'd worked out a way
so I could register each page, which worked
satisfactorily. And then you have to crank it by hand
through the press. So each plate, each impression, takes
quite a while. Probably I was doing six an hour.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, that is slow going.
GERRY: I don't know, maybe I could do twelve an hour, but
that's really bearing down.
ZIEGLER: Since you're printing intaglio, it must be very
hard to be sure that you're getting a good impression.
Because you have to be sure that the ink is in all the
indentations, and then you have to be sure that the paper
is pressed down enough to get into the indentations.
GERRY: Right, right. Of course, that's what —
101
ZIEGLER: Without having so much ink that it spills over
into the parts that aren't indented.
GERRY: Yeah. It's amazing. Sometimes it works, and
sometimes it doesn't. Usually, the beginning part--like
you say — the ink doesn't get all the way in the bottom of
the grooves. It takes quite a while to work it in there.
And then how much of the surface you want to wipe off is up
to the person that ' s doing the wiping . You might want to
leave a little tone on there. There's one I did-- One of
the weeds was morning glories. So where the actual flower
was, I wiped it out more than I did the background, so that
the flower sort of glowed through a little lighter than the
background. But that was something that just came to me
while I was doing it. I didn't intend to do it that way
when I started.
Now, let's see, David W. Davies, House Olson,
Printer. Davies was a librarian at the Honnald Library in
Claremont. He retired and began to write histories of
local printers. Originally for the Castle Press, he wrote
the story of the Castle Press in Pasadena. And he wrote a
number of other stories I can't remember right now. This
particular one was about House Olson, who was a very
convivial printer and had been one of the founders of the
Castle Press. This was just concerning his own life; it
was a short book. I got the opportunity to print it and
102
publish It.
ZIEGLER: Did you print any others for David Davles?
GERRY: We were going to, but then he died. I think this
was the only one I did. I set the type, and I had Pat do
the presswork for me. I bound It In paper, stiff
wrappers. Also, some were bound In boards. I still have
some sheets of It that I may bind up In the future. It
turned out to be a book I was proud of because It was
original. Let's see. It had a tlpped-ln picture of Olson,
and It had a hand-colored Initial and lots of letterpress
examples--llnecut examples--of work he did, the typography
he'd done. So that's part of a-- Glen Dawson called It a
series of books about Los Angeles printers.
ZIEGLER: Is llnecut the same as zinc cut?
GERRY: Uh-huh [affirmative]. It just means It doesn't
have a halftone screen. It's not a photograph or a
paintlng--a continuous tone process--lt ' s just black or
white, period. There are no dot patterns In It.
Miriam Bragdon, Through the Garden Gate. Now, here's
a typical example of a relative getting through to you. It
was some poems of a very distant relative of mine. She was
eighty years old and she kept saying, "Hurry up! Hurry
up! I want this done before I die." So I kept-- And, of
course, I think she may still be alive! This was done In
1975. She was pretty strict. I had made a little
103
typographical error on the last page, and I kept explaining
to her how this happened and not to worry about it, that it
was perfectly all right. But she insisted that I do
something about it, and I couldn't figure out what to do.
I kept saying, "That's all right. You know, it's just what
happens in printing." No, I was to do something about
it! She kept on the phone to me from Chicago. Finally —
and I was mad enough about taking on the job in the first
place- -I took a razor blade, cut the back page off,
reprinted it, and tipped it on in the little booklet. It
was kind of a cute little book of her poems.
ZIEGLER: I think you drew a garden gate for the cover or
the title page or something.
GERRY: Yeah, yeah. I did a nice little gate for her. It
wasn't printed very-- Could have been printed in a darker
color so it was a little more visible. But it was a garden
gate. It had a little pansy peeking around the corner of
the half -open gate, which I thought she would love. I
thought it would be perfect for her book. But she never
commented. Even when I pointed it out to her, she wasn't
very impressed. She was impressed with her own poems,
however! Speaking of poems--
ZIEGLER: Which, as I remember, were sort of lifted from
Oklahoma and all sorts of other places.
GERRY: Oh, really? Did you read some of the poems?
104
ZIEGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: Oh, yeah. [laughter] Well, here's poems--these
were a little better — by Walt Stanchfield, who I'd done a
book of woodcuts for before [Walt Stanchfield: A Series of
Wood Cuts] . And I told him — He had his poems, and he
wanted to publish them. I said, "Well, I don't do poetry,
but if you give me some small woodcuts — " All his woodcuts
had been very large before. "If you give me some small
woodcuts, I can print a small book, a 6" X 9" book. I'll
do the poems . " I thought that that would keep him away for
years, in fact perhaps forever. But it was only about a
month later that a box full of cuts arrived, all to
illustrate the poems. So I was obliged to do it.
Wait a minute, I'm talking about the wrong book.
Summer Impressions [and Other Poems]-- I'm sorry, cancel
everything I said about Summer Impressions. Summer
Impressions was a book of poetry I published for Walt
Stanchfield. I did that down at Laguna [Beach] in 1968,
and it was strictly poems. And there's nothing I can say
that's memorable about the book at all. Even the title
page I can't remember. Which may be good, because that
emphasizes the poetry. So that was that experience.
ZIEGLER: I remember that the woodcuts were very
attractive.
GERRY: Well, that was another book. That was another one
105
called Spring--
ZIEGLER: Oh. Yeah, I guess I'm probably mixing up the
three or four Walt Stanchfield books. Yeah, Spring Barley:
[Poems of the Santa Ynez Valley] was the one that had such
nice woodcuts and a beautiful barley design on the cover.
GERRY: Yeah, that book came out very well.
ZIEGLER: Did we talk about Spring Barley?
GERRY: I think we did. That was in the Western Books
Exhibition. That turned out to be a very good book. I'd
done it on a handpress. It took me a whole solid month,
working six, seven days a week. So even though I have a
handpress now-- It was a terrible lot of work for some
reason. I think I tried to do a hundred copies. And there
were multicolored cuts. I mean, the cuts were not all
printed in black; they were printed in several colors.
That took a lot of careful inking, because I wanted to do
it in the same impression. I did it on damp paper. That's
Spring Barley I'm talking about.
The Marvelous Platen Jobber of George Phineas
Gordon . I had bought a little press in about '66, maybe
'67. It was an 8' X 12' Challenge Gordon. I took it all
apart, cleaned it all up, and painted it. Made it all
pretty like new. And that became my press. But while I'm
taking it apart, I got very interested in the Gordon
press. And I bought a book at Dawson's called The Platen
106
called Spring--
ZIEGLER: Oh. Yeah, I guess I'm probably mixing up the
three or four Walt Stanchfield books. Yeah, Spring Barley:
[Poems of the Santa Ynez Valley] was the one that had such
nice woodcuts and a beautiful barley design on the cover.
GERRY: Yeah, that book came out very well.
ZIEGLER: Did we talk about Spring Barley?
GERRY: I think we did. That was in the Western Books
Exhibition. That turned out to be a very good book. I'd
done it on a handpress. It took me a whole solid month,
working six, seven days a week. So even though I have a
handpress now-- It was a terrible lot of work for some
reason. I think I tried to do a hundred copies. And there
were multicolored cuts. I mean, the cuts were not all
printed in black; they were printed in several colors.
That took a lot of careful inking, because I wanted to do
it in the same impression. I did it on damp paper. That's
Spring Barley I'm talking about.
The Marvelous Platen Jobber of George Phineas
Gordon. I had bought a little press in about '66, maybe
'67. It was an 8' X 12' Challenge Gordon. I took it all
apart, cleaned it all up, and painted it. Made it all
pretty like new. And that became my press. But while I'm
taking it apart, I got very interested in the Gordon
press. And I bought a book at Dawson's called The Platen
106
Jobber by Ralph Green. This man had written about the
platen jobbers, because they had all gone out of style and
he was sorry to see that happen. He felt there should be
something to remember the platen jobbers, which had been so
popular for almost a hundred years. So I decided I would
write my own little bit. I made an exploded view of the
platen press, the Gordon jobber. I made an exploded view
of all the parts and cut it in linoleum. Then there were a
couple of other little illustrations I had. I wrote a
little bit of text and put it all together in a broadsheet,
which I still have some of. And it turned out to be pretty
successful--I can't say that I'm not proud of it. I also
redid this broadside later on in a different kind of type,
using the same cuts, and printed it better. I did a better
job of printing it. And also used the type and the cuts
again to make a little booklet about the platen jobber.
ZIEGLER: Well, here are some things that I saw listed as
things that you were proposing to do. And I wonder which
of these were actually done. Also, if you see any that are
missing from this list, if you could mention them and talk
about them.
GERRY: Marion [A.] Baker. I met her. She's an artist. I
met her here at UCLA. A bunch of us had come to some-- Not
a convention, but it was a three-day meeting. People spoke
and it was--
107
ZIEGLER: Conference?
GERRY: Conference, that's what it was. That's why I met
her. She was interested in wood engraving, and she wanted
to learn wood engraving. She had this idea, and she liked
these spice boxes that she collected. I said, "You make
the wood engravings and write me the text, and we'll do a
little book on it." Of course, she never got around to
it. So that was the end of that. Another one was
Forgotten California Wineries by David Hitchcock. I was
trying to inspire my friend in his retirement to write me
something about wine that would be of interest to him to
research, because he liked to travel around California.
Well, as I told you before, he wasn't interested in doing
that much work. It didn't appeal to him, so he didn't do
it.
Dan [Daniel] Bailey did write me something about a
Bloody Mary, but I didn't think he really had done
satisfactory research as to the origins of the Bloody Mary
drink. Because I was going to do it for the Food and Drink
series. So it's sort of lying around. I edited it a
couple of times and had him rewrite it a couple of times,
and it's just sort of lying there. It may be done some
day.
Square-Back Binding for the Small Printer. I had
written a manuscript with all the drawings for how to bind
108
your own book at home. [It was for] a small-time
printer. But I never-- Who could care? I mean, there are
so many bookbinding classes around, I don't think-- It was
for edition binding for a small printer. It was some sort
of dream that I just never got around to doing.
ZIEGLER: Well, I think there would be people interested in
it.
GERRY: Yeah, could be. But then I began to realize my own
system of binding was kind of unorthodox, and maybe I'd be
spreading the wrong word to people about how to bind.
ZIEGLER: Is there an orthodoxy of binding?
GERRY: Oh, yes.
ZEIGLER: Anything that works I think would be acceptable.
GERRY: Well, that is sort of my theory, but I think a
person who is a real binder would probably find fault with
some of the things I've invented myself. I mean the
process I do, which may be very wrong according to a real
bookbinder, because I more or less taught it to myself.
ZIEGLER: What do you do? Could you describe it?
GERRY: Well, maybe the way I glue the papers on or the way
I sew it. Or the way — When you look at the book, you'd
probably say, "Well, yeah, it looks just like any square-
back book." But I'm sure a binder or a connoisseur could
find some fault with it. And I sort of thought maybe I was
passing on some information that people would have to
109
unlearn at a later date.
Gentleman's Cooking Book, I still want to do that. A
male chauvinist pig's cookbook, but I wouldn't call it
that.
ZIEGLER: [laughter] What makes it a male chauvinist pig's
cookbook?
GERRY: Oh, it would have recipes of things that men like
to eat.
ZIEGLER: Such as?
GERRY: Corned beef hash and-- What else? Things like
that, that a man cooks when he's home and he's "baching"
it. When his wife's away or--
ZIEGLER: Real men eat corned beef hash!
GERRY: Right, real men's food. I fiddled around with it
for a long time, and I keep thinking, you know, it's one of
those things that I'll do someday. I met a fellow who's a
writer and also interested in food. I may say, "Hey, how
about you writing it for me?" But I don't know. It's just
kind of hard to-- I just have to sit down and work at it
for a long time. I have thousands of recipes, and I have
to beat it down to a reasonable number. A reasonable
number of foods that only men eat!
ZIEGLER: [laughter] What are some of the others?
GERRY: Well, I wish I could remember to tell you now. Oh,
I suppose chili--there would be a lot of chili recipes.
110
What else was there? Corned beef hash. Seems like I could
remember. Oh, just things here and there that I — Oh, beef
bourguignonne, and things that are fairly easy to make.
The recipes are just written in prose. There's not a big
list of ingredients or how much of each ingredient. It's
sort of up to the man to throw it in the pot.
ZIEGLER: Well, in fact, I think women will enjoy your
cookbook , too .
GERRY: Oh, sure
ZIEGLER: And I must say, I once made beef bourguignonne
over a camp fire.
GERRY: Oh, really?
ZEIGLER: Yes.
GERRY: That sounds great. [laughter] No kidding! Where
was that?
ZIEGLER: Well, I was camping up at Santa Barbara, out in
the mountains behind Santa Barbara, at a place I really
love called Los Osos.
GERRY: Oh, yeah.
ZIEGLER: Upper Oso is the name of it.
GERRY: Oh, Oso, okay.
ZIEGLER: You marinate the beef in red wine, you know. So
what I did was marinate the beef and all the spices in the
wine and then just freeze it. I took this solid block of
stuff with me. And then, on the first night out, I had a
111
big heavy iron pot, and I just stuck the big heavy iron pot
right down in the campfire, with this mixture in it, and
cooked it up.
GERRY: Oh, golly. That sounds great!
ZIEGLER: It was. Anyway, could you tell me some about
doing Weather Bird? Your little magazine or newsletter
that you put out and designed very attractively each time.
GERRY : Yes , Weather Bird. One time at Dawson ' s Book
Store, I ran across a portfolio that said "newsletter of
the Curwen Press." It had, oh, say, six newsletters in
there. And it was very reasonably priced. I mean, it was
$5 or something like this. I thought, "Gee, this looks
sort of interesting." I knew nothing about the Curwen
Press. I suppose I'd heard of it, but I knew nothing about
it. These little newsletters were about printing, so I
just bought them for the fun of it and because they were
cheap. I'd read them over and over, and they were very
intriguing, how they had foldouts and they had used mostly
material that they had already printed. This was just like
an advertising thing they sent out to their customers. I
thought, "I'll do one. I'll just use old paper and I'll
use cuts that are already done, and I'll print samples of
title pages I may still have standing around. Just to show
what the Weather Bird press has done. I thought I'd do it
every quarter, I suppose. I was very, very hard-pressed to
112
do it once a year. But the first one came out-- I can't
remember what year, I tried to keep it lighthearted in a
light, more of an amusing sort of way. This sort of
writing. Comments on whatever I was showing. I tried to
keep it lighthearted. So I did the first one, and I didn't
promise myself anything, like I'd do another one. But the
second year was coming around, and I thought, "Well, I'll
do one more." And after ten years I couldn't believe it,
I'd done ten of them. I mean, maybe that's not much of an
accomplishment. But it's an accomplishment for me, because
it's amazing that I was able to do it for ten years. But
it was really started because of those Curwen Press
newsletters. Since then, I've tried to get a complete
collection, and no matter how much money it might cost, I
still can't get a complete collection of the Curwen
letters. There's one I have that's missing, and I think
they only did twelve. I don't know. Somewhere around
twelve or fifteen. That's how that came about. I may do
it again someday, I don't know. It was very enjoyable, in
spite of the fact that I was always pressed to get material
for it. There was only an eight-page booklet.
ZIEGLER: Also very informative. You have little essays
on, well, for instance. Herb Yellin and Lord John Press. I
remember really enjoying one essay with samples about how
you do different cover patterns for binding, things like
113
that.
GERRY: The ideas mostly came from the Curwen Press
newsletters, I think. That was my inspiration for doing
that. I did keep some. I kept twenty-five of every copy,
and then I issued a collection in a portfolio. Not unlike
the Curwen Press portfolio. I think I had some paste paper
covers on it tied together with a string. They sold right
away. Everybody wanted one, and they were gone. I think I
just have one copy now. [tape recorder off]
ZIEGLER: Can you think of any other books?
GERRY: I can't, Rebecca, I haven't made a list of all the
books I've done for a long time. When I only had three or
four books, I was always making lists of all of my
publications. But I haven't for a long time. It seems
like you've covered a great many, if not every one of
them. I guess I said I was working right now on a
supplement to The San Pasqual Press: [A Dream Nearly
Realized] . I think we covered the San Pasqual Press
earlier, in last session. That's the most recent book I've
done, I think. The story of the San Pasqual Press. And I
guess recently I got some more information. I was able to
talk directly with Val Trefz, who was one of the
founders. I discovered he's still living down in Orange
County .
ZIEGLER: What's he doing now?
114
GERRY: He's retired, but his press is still going--called
the Trefz Press- -and his son [Steve Trefz] is managing it
now. So that little bit of extra information, plus some
other San Pasqual Press books I found through Val Trefz,
caused me to print the supplement. Ed [Edwin H.] Carpenter
is looking at the proofs right now, to make sure that I do
the bibliography — that is one of his specialties--that I do
the bibliography right.
Then I plan to do books I have-- I'm guilty of
announcing books I'm going to do and then not doing them,
but I'll tell you anyway. The book of Southern California
Seaside Plants, which will be done on linoleum cuts, and I
hope that [Charles Leland] Richardson will write it for
me. That will probably be the biggest, most difficult of
books I'll ever do. I will probably do it on a
handpress. And the cuts will be multicolored. I don't
know how many I'll do--maybe fifty copies will be about all
I can do on a handpress. And I'll probably bind it myself.
Then one that's been in work for a long time called
The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast. A very
early children's poem.
ZEIGLER: Oh, that sounds like fun.
GERRY: It's supposedly the first children's poem that
didn't have a lesson or a moral to it.
ZIEGLER: Sounds like it would be fun to illustrate. Are
115
you going to illustrate it?
GERRY: I've worked out almost all the illustrations on
that. Again, to be cut in linoleum, but to be printed only
in one color, probably in black. And then we mentioned The
Gentleman's Cooking Book, which is still fairly vague. I
should have brought my list of things I want to do. I
can't remember any others right now.
ZIEGLER: Let's see, I know of a few that I somehow didn't
make slips for. There was Dibden's Ghost that you did for
Lorson ' s bookshop .
GERRY: That was a Christmas giveaway, I think. I don't
know, maybe he did sell them. I did quite a few I think.
There were five hundred, and I think his [James E.
Lorson's] wife [Joan Lorson] offered to sell them. She's
probably still selling them.
ZIEGLER: I enjoyed that so much that I xeroxed a copy of
your proofs for myself. Because we learned about Thomas
Frognall Dibden in my analytical bibliography course last
quarter, and I found it entertaining.
GERRY: I confess that when Jim brought me the poem, I
said, "Who the heck is this Dibden?" He said, "You ought
to know. He was a great bookman." That was my
introduction to Dibden, although I know a little bit about
him. If I find a copy, I'll send it to you. But you'll
probably be gone to Arizona by then.
116
ZIEGLER: Very likely.
GERRY: I'm sure Jim's got plenty of them.
ZIEGLER: And there was also — I don't know why I didn't get
a card made for this either — T. H. White's Christmas at
Forest Sauvage.
GERRY: That was excerpted from The Sword and the Stone. I
always loved that Christmas section of the book, so I did
it without getting permission. I figured I wasn't going to
make any money on it, maybe they wouldn't prosecute me. I
was only going to give it to my friends. I did some little
wood engravings that weren't too good.
ZIEGLER: I think that would fall within the doctrine of
fair use, as they say in the copyright law.
I wonder if you could talk a little more about your
partnership with Pat Reagh.
GERRY: I was in Fallbrook and I had my shop going. I had
come up to Los Angeles a couple of times, and I'd heard
about Pat Reagh and I'd seen some of his work. I was very
impressed. I think Bill [William] Dailey of Dailey's book-
shop [William and Victoria Dailey Rare Books and Fine Prints]
had discovered Pat and was using him to print something. The
first thing I saw was the Southern California Book Dealers
Association Directory. It's probably the wrong title, but it
was a beautiful job Pat had done.
So one time over at the Castle Press, there was some
117
event there, and Pall [W.] Bohne introduced me to Pat. We
talked, and I told him how much I liked his things and so
on. He may have even said then, "Maybe we should go in and
be partners . " I don ' t know why he wanted to be partners ,
to tell you the truth. He liked the kind of work I did.
So I can't really tell you how. I guess I probably had a
fantasy of us having this printshop that would really
satisfy all of my dreams. So I finally agreed with Pat. I
said, "Okay, let's be partners." And we went over our
equipment and said, "We'll keep this, and we'll get rid of
that, and we're going to get this." And he was going to
buy Lillian Marks ' s Heidelberg cylinder press. That was
the biggest move of all for him, and for me too.
So we had looked around, and I found a place in
Glendale right near the train station which seemed to be
the right place for us. It was a kind of an industrial
neighborhood, and it wasn't too run-down but it wasn't too
expensive. We were going to try to be cheap. It had
enough square feet. We figured how many square feet we
needed. I can't remember, two thousand or something like
that we needed. So we moved in there around ' 80 or '81, I
can't remember for sure. And here was all this stuff, all
of our equipment. I brought everything I could from
Fallbrook that would fit on a truck. Everything we had
moved ourselves, plus what the movers had moved, was heaped
118
in the middle of the shop.
We must have spent two months trying to put it all
together, arranging it and sorting it out and trying to get
an electrician. We had difficulty. No electrician would
touch the job because the building was so old. Finally we
complained to the landlord. I mean, here we were stuck
with this — You know, it had cost us thousands of dollars
in professional fees to have this equipment moved. We were
stuck. So we were kind of panicked, and I thought I might
even have to go back to work until we got some of the
problems straightened out. Finally we talked to the
landlord, and he got someone to bootleg in the wiring for
us. We were all wired up and pretty soon ready to go, and
eventually jobs that had been waiting, you know, couldn't
wait any longer. We had to get on them. It sort of
overlapped, the arranging of the shop and getting some work
done. In fact some work we had to have at one time done on
the outside for one client. We didn't even have a printing
press that would work.
But eventually it really got going. I think that
first year I stayed with Pat, we did more books than he may
have ever done in any one year since. Now, it may have
been a good year for books. Everybody wanted to publish.
Publishing was still profitable. I think a lot of the
publishers, like Yellin and [Ralph] Sylvester and [Stathis]
119
Orphanos, had to cut back in later years.
We worked a long time. I tell you, we just worked all
the time. That's about all we did was work. I think all
the things we did turned out very well. I'm surprised at
some of the incidental things we had time to do. I can't
think how we did it. And Pat bought a house near the area
and he moved in there, right near his shop. He's still in
the same shop. And it's still essentially the same
equipment. After I left I took out the Linotype, which he
wasn't too fond of. I think we made a mistake by keeping--
We had two vertical presses, and we kept his and not
mine. I think we should have kept mine. His was cleaner,
but mine was easier to operate. But then the Heidelberg
was such a marvelous press that we eventually didn't even
use the vertical, and Pat finally got rid of it. I moved
the Linotype out. As a matter of fact, I had to junk it,
because I couldn't sell it to anybody. Nobody would even
take it off my hands, so I had to junk it. And I took out
some other things there when we broke up the partnership.
ZIEGLER: Why did you decide to discontinue it?
GERRY: I think I was probably too old. I was about fifty-
one when we started. Pat was only about thirty I think. I
was not professionally trained as a printer. I was doing
things in an amateur way, and Pat kind of didn't like that,
naturally. He wanted things done more professionally. And
120
he was right. If it was a business, we couldn't fool
around like amateurs. I had made a lot of mistakes that
made me unhappy about being in the business. So much
depended on accuracy, and I had made mistakes which cost us
money. So I, you know, I just told Pat, "I can't do the
partnership deal anymore. I want to get out of it."
"Fine." It was okay with him. He always asked me to come
back to work, but I think I wasn't prepared to work all
that hard all that time. So I went back to the Disney
Studio for the easy money. And I might add, we made very
little money at the business.
Pat does all right now, but the first year is probably
the toughest. Pat has a reputation, and rightly so, of
being the best printer in Southern California as far as the
bookwork goes and letterpress . He ' s since come onto some
later-model typesetting equipment. So it's been almost ten
years now that he's been in the larger shop situation. So
it's well seasoned. He is doing work for the Book Club of
California right at this minute, and he's made a good
success of it. Whether I was there or not, I'm sure he
would have anyway. It probably took two people to have
enough money and enough energy to get it that step up from
where he was on Ninth Street. So that's about what I
contributed then, that one step up. It was quite an
experience, I'll tell you, that year that we worked
121
together. Somewhere in one of my newsletters I published a
list of books we did that year.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, I saw that. That was a pretty impressive
turnout .
I'm just looking here to see what other questions I
had written down. Okay, I wonder if we could move to some
of the questions about design of printed matter and books
in general. First of all, maybe we can talk about
different typefaces and how you go about choosing a
typeface. I have here a xerox of your sample of the
typefaces of the Weather Bird Press. It might be a good
way to approach this if you want to look at it and just
comment on each typeface and in what circumstances you
would use that typeface and what connotations it has, what
impression it gives, and things like that.
GERRY: Well, the first one we've got here is Helvetica.
And I bought that strictly for commercial work. When I had
my shop and I was going to try to make it successful and
make it support itself, I figured I needed an up-to-date
type, which was Helvetica. It was a very popular face at
that time for commercial work. I don't think I ever used
it very much, and it was the first thing I sold when I left
that situation.
ZIEGLER: And that's a sans serif type. Could you talk a
little about using sans serif types and what you think they
122
could [inaudible] .
GERRY: I'm not fond of sans serif types. Like I said, I
only got this because of its appeal to customers who wanted
to be up-to-date. I am not a fan of these faces. I don't
know why they even came up with Helvetica. They've been
through so many sans serif types in the advertising
typography in such a short time. I mean, what was wrong
with Futura? It was excellent. One of the first sans serif
faces was Futura, and it is just as good as any of them.
Unfortunately, it was a victim of fashion. And they came up
and they had Venus; they all wanted to use Venus. There
were a couple of other-- Franklin Gothic was revived. Not
bad at all, Franklin Gothic. Then they came to Universe and
Helvetica, and they were all types that did not interest me
personally, although I could certainly see their use in the
commercial world. I much prefer the older types, the faces
with serifs on them. The first type that I ever got that
was worth a darn for the machine was a Fairfield, which was
Rudolf Ruzicka's Linotype face. I had that in two sizes,
and I used that quite a bit. I don't think I particular ly--
Every printer falls in love with a type at one time and then
falls out of love later on. The one type that I will
probably never tire of is Linotype Janson. And, of course,
they have foundry Janson and Monotype Janson. But the
Janson type for typesetting machines is the one I will never
123
tire of. I think I like the Linotype — With the exception
of the Linotype italic Janson, I like it maybe better than
the Monotype Janson, which is a little lighter weight.
ZIEGLER: Can I take a look at the sample of the Janson?
GERRY: I don't think I had Janson when I did this
catalog. It was something I always wanted, but it was
never for sale used. All my Linotype faces I bought used,
except for the Helvetica, at this period when I had the
little shop in Laguna.
ZIEGLER: Where do you buy used types or how do you find
out about used types?
GERRY: Oh, there were lots of dealers in Los Angeles who
were selling used Linotype matrices, because the technology
was changing around the late sixties. More and more
printers were getting rid of their hot metals, and the
dealers were loaded up with it. You could get it at a very
reasonable price sometimes. I got mattes at nine cents
apiece, and they were selling them new at thirty- five cents
apiece. You took your chances. When you bought it used,
you might end up not having all the characters if you
bought used fonts from questionable sources. Some dealers,
like Mid-West Matrix, would send you a proof and they were
very careful to make sure their fonts were operable. Other
people who sold things cheaper- -
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TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
MAY 4, 1989
ZIEGLER: Okay. I don't know all of the typefaces. And I
don't know much about Janson. Could you describe it? Is
it an old style or a modern style?
GERRY: Janson was, I think, a Dutch face that preceded
Caslon. And [William] Caslon when he cut his famous face —
named Caslon- -he may have been influenced by the Dutch
types. Janson was one of them. It has many similarities
to Caslon. However, to me, it's a little closer set, and
the width of the letters-- You get more letters per line
than you can with Caslon.
ZIEGLER: So it gives a denser, darker look to the type
block?
GERRY: It doesn't call attention to itself as much as
Caslon does. Every time you see Caslon, you go, "Bingo!
Caslon." But people, most people, when you see Janson you
don't think about it. I like Janson, because it was a very
uneven type. Almost crude in some respects, but crude in a
very nice way. Another face I liked, which I always
thought would be an excellent contrast to Janson, if you
could have two faces on a machine, would be Electra. It
was [William] Dwiggins ' s face, his masterpiece of
typesetting machine face. I had some Electra for quite a
while, but not anymore. I don't know, I'm just telling you
125
my own personal taste in type. I don't know if that's
exactly what I should be telling you. Or was that what you
asked?
ZIEGLER: Well, it's all interesting. I wonder if you
could talk some more about maybe the sort of artistic
connotations of typefaces or what sorts of material you
would consider different typefaces especially appropriate
for, just in looking right for the material.
GERRY: Oh, my own personal feeling is that, yes, typefaces
are sometimes more appropriate for one thing than
another. But for the most part, I think a printer gets a
new typeface because he likes the type and he's never had
it before. He uses it for whatever job comes up first and
tells himself that it's appropriate for that particular
job, that particular book, that particular text. I think
that there's an awfully broad range of types which are
appropriate.
ZIEGLER: I saw, though, that you had done some interesting
things with some things that were sort of nineteenth
century. And, in the impression you were trying to give,
you did use some of those highly ornamented typefaces that
[A. J.] Corrigan made such fun of. I thought that was
great, because it gave that nineteenth-century look to
it. I remember one case-- I'm afraid I don't remember
which book, but you had chosen a "modern style" typeface in
126
the old meaning of "modern style, " which was modern in the
eighteenth century. I thought it looked especially
appropriate, because it was something with a sort of
journalistic, nineteenth-century slant.
GERRY: Oh. I can't remember that. I can't remember which
one that would be. I think that to do what they call
allusive typography is always entertaining to the one
person trying to do it. To try to imitate a period of
typography. Or suggest- -better if you suggest a period of
typography. It's an intriguing thing to do for a printer,
for a designer. [Grant] Dahlstrom was certainly excellent
at that. And he--
ZIEGLER: Would he ever give you any advice, like saying,
"This typeface is not really appropriate for what you're
printing" or--?
GERRY: Oh, sure, yes. Definitely. And typefaces that he
just didn't like period, he had plenty of comment on. A
lot of [Frederic] Goudy's faces he didn't like. But most
of the printers that have influenced me have always gone
more for the book types--book faces--like Bembo and
Janson. Those are the two really nice ones. Then there
are more Monotype faces, Fournier and Bembo narrow
italic. Gosh, I can't think of them right offhand.
Monotype was the one that made the most influential
contribution to types of our time under [Stanley] Morison
127
and the English Monotype Company. The American Monotype
Company I don't think did very much in the way of
contributing types. Perhaps in the linecasting machines,
like the Linotype and the intertype. [C. H.] Griffith with
the Linotype Company came up with some very good types,
Janson for one. And then Dwiggins ' s Electra, I thought, was
a good face. Some of his other more-- Caledonia, Dwiggins ' s
Caledonia, which I don't particularly like, but that was
very popular for a while. But the real classical-- The
faces that alluded to classic types were really revived by
the English Monotype Company. The typefounders themselves,
I think, like American typefounders, didn't contribute much
to book types. Of course, that wasn't their business by
then. Nobody was going to set a book by hand anyway. They
contributed more in the advertising field. And then most of
the little local typefounders were casting from Monotype
matrices. So Monotype had a large influence, because the
typefounder could just buy the Monotype mattes and a
Thompson machine and be in the typefounding business. He
didn't have to design or cut or have the expensive problems
of designing his own type. So what else am I supposed to — ?
I can't think of anything.
ZIEGLER: Well, would you like to look over this and see if
there are any other typefaces there that you'd like to
comment on?
128
GERRY: Well, the Monotype Bembo is about the nicest face
done in our time, and it's a revival of a Venetian sort of
face. It's not really Venetian, but it's a type that comes
from quite a long time ago. I'd say it's the best, most
long-lasting of our twentieth-century book-face revivals.
And John Bell, that's another great revival of a
nineteenth-century type, but which was sort of the
predecessor to moderns. The Scotch Roman probably followed
this. I say nineteenth century, but I see the date here is
actually 1788. So it's just before the turn of the
century. The Monotype people revived John Bell in their
version. Linotype did something vaguely similar in their
Monticello, but it was too soft. Janson, of course, the
original Janson, was around in 1690. Of course, we're
looking at a book of types that I had in my printshop.
Then there were some decorative faces here which I — And
then in the fifties, the 1950s, there was a revival of
nineteenth-century Victorian faces. The founders dug into
their files and cast up a lot of these faces which they'd
had since the nineteenth century- -since Victorian times.
They cast those up, and people were very fond of using
those.
ZIEGLER: They could do a lot of--
GERRY: And I think used the way they were later on, with
maybe just one word, one letter, one line or so of a
129
Victorian type set against a standard sort of Roman- -book
Roman — made a very nice contrast. A lot of people did very
nice things with that, including Grant and Saul [Marks] and
Ward [Ritchie]. I think Ward did a little more — There's
some.
ZEIGLER: Yes.
GERRY: What was that? It was called Jim Crow- -a sort of
shaded type, shaded at the top. These are names I
invented. Woodcraft, like Fantastic, but the Woodcraft
looked like it was made out of logs. Very Victorian.
ZIEGLER: Could you mention some books that are examples of
that use of a Victorian typeface in contrast with a regular
typeface?
GERRY: Oh, I can't really. Grant did that a lot. And I
think the Grabhorns even did it somewhat. Ward's
typography was a little more--and only by comparison--a
little more contemporary. He'd spent a lot of time in the
advertising business. I don't want this to sound
derogatory, because I've sort of been saying derogatory
things about advertising typography. But I think Ward was
always very contemporary in his typography. I mean, in
comparison to Grant and Saul- Saul continually referred to
past classic examples, I think.
ZIEGLER: Well, we've sort of covered it, but I wonder if
you-- Are there typeface designers that you especially
130
admire?
GERRY: Well, first we start with the local three that
influenced me. That was Ward and Grant and Saul. And I
pretty much follow all that they set up--set down. I never
questioned them anyway. Whether these were particularly
Californian or not, I can't judge. Some say they are more
Calif ornian than others, but I don't know. Then I would go
to some English typographers. Certainly [Francis] Meynell
and the Nonesuch Press. A lot of the Curwen Press things
appeal to me, a lot of their booklets, and their books;
they did a lot of nice books. Curwen and Meynell and the
Golden Cockerel Press. I always admired the wood
engravings, but the typography was not always something I
admired or tried to follow.
Other influences would be-- Well, not Goudy. I didn't
particularly like Goudy 's work, although I liked his type
Californian. Cooper didn't do much for me, although a very
interesting, historic person- -Oswald Cooper- -and the things
he did. I think maybe Elmer Adler might have, somehow,
with some of his things he did with the Colophon . Peter
Bielenson did things that appealed to me. Even his little
books that he used to sell in the stores for a dollar
always were very entertaining and very up- front
graphically. You felt that he'd almost printed them with
his own hands. You don't see books like that around
131
admire?
GERRY: Well, first we start with the local three that
Influenced me. That was Ward and Grant and Saul. And I
pretty much follow all that they set up--set down. I never
questioned them anyway. Whether these were particularly
Californian or not, I can't judge. Some say they are more
Californian than others, but I don't know. Then I would go
to some English typographers. Certainly [Francis] Meynell
and the Nonesuch Press. A lot of the Curwen Press things
appeal to me, a lot of their booklets, and their books;
they did a lot of nice books. Curwen and Meynell and the
Golden Cockerel Press. I always admired the wood
engravings, but the typography was not always something I
admired or tried to follow.
Other influences would be-- Well, not Goudy. I didn't
particularly like Goudy 's work, although I liked his type
Californian. Cooper didn't do much for me, although a very
interesting, historic person--Oswald Cooper--and the things
he did. I think maybe Elmer Adler might have, somehow,
with some of his things he did with the Colophon. Peter
Bielenson did things that appealed to me. Even his little
books that he used to sell in the stores for a dollar
always were very entertaining and very up- front
graphically. You felt that he'd almost printed them with
his own hands. You don't see books like that around
131
anymore, not for a dollar anyway, or at all, for any
price. Some of his better, more expensive books that
Bielenson did at the Peter Pauper Press I think were-- I
liked them. So I guess if you like them, they're going to
influence you. You want to imitate them. I'm very
imitative. If I see something I like I try to force it on
whatever particular job I'm doing at the time, and that's
usually unsuccessful.
Of course, I like graphic. The involvement of
pictorial matter with type, if it's very graphic, like
linoleum cuts or wood engravings.
ZIEGLER: And which do you think are some of the most
successful examples of that?
GERRY: I can't say right offhand. I think a lot of the
illustrated books that the Curwen Press did were very good
along those lines. And Meynell, the Nonesuch Press. Gosh,
his The Anatomy of Melancholy, there are some great
drawings in there that are very well integrated with the
type. There should be some example I could cite, but I
can ' t .
ZIEGLER: [inaudible]
GERRY: I didn't do my homework, you see. [laughter]
ZIEGLER: Well, I don't want to give you that impression.
I mean, the amount that you do know is amazing. Could you
talk a little about choosing the paper when you print
132
something?
GERRY: Paper's always been a terrible problem for me. I
don't know why. But other people seem to not be able to
find-- They suffer from the same problem, not being able to
find the paper that they think they want. Now, there was a
paper that I-- It was so hard to get paper. The handmade
papers were so expensive and were so few when I first
started printing in the sixties that I didn't pay any
attention. All I wanted was a good commercial paper. But
all of the good commercial papers were going to offset, and
they were very hard to print on by letterpress. So I was
continually going through the catalogs of Blake Moffat and
the commercial paper people, looking for the ideal paper to
print on letterpress. And I was wringing my hands because
I could never find it. But, lo and behold, I look back on
some packages of paper that I still have from those days,
and I think, "I had it. It was right there and I didn't
know it. Look at this beautiful paper!" But at the time I
thought, "It's only a substitute for what I really want."
ZIEGLER: You mean just because it's so much better than
what's available now?
GERRY: Partially that, but partially because I couldn't
see it at the time. I thought, "It's just a compromise.
It's just a compromise for what I really want."
ZIEGLER: You really wanted to be printing on handmade
133
paper?
GERRY: No, not really. But I wanted to be printing on a
paper that would decently accept the letterpress. And here
I had it all the time, I just didn't know it. So paper is
a tricky thing. Then you think, well, certain papers are
for certain things. If you want to print something that's
very fine, you're going to need a smooth paper, if you're
going to not print it damp. That's about the only
requirement, I would say. I think you take a paper because
you like it. Or because you're tired of the one you've
been using. I think Mohawk superfine is very good for
anything. It's a cheap commercial paper, but it works very
good for letterpress, and it looks good. You can hardly
fault it. Ragston's another one that's hard to fault.
They're getting a little harder to print on, or at least
the Ragston's a little harder printing on than it once was
letterpress.
ZIEGLER: Have you ever printed on handmade paper?
GERRY: Yes. I do it more so all the time now.
ZIEGLER: I imagine sometimes it's hard, because handmade
paper is by nature irregular.
GERRY: You usually do it damp--it's going to be damp. I
would say I more and more go to the paper catalog of-- I
won't say handmade, because very little of the paper is
handmade. But the- -what do you want to say? --the less
134
commercial papers that are handled by Nelson Whitehead and
the Paper Source and some of the art supply houses like
Daniel Smith. I'll go to those papers because now there's
a big selection and they're also priced within reason. So
you can afford them. And maybe now, in my later years, I
don't mind paying a dollar a sheet, whereas that would have
killed me to have to do that ten years ago or fifteen years
ago. But like cheap wines at Trader Joe's for $1.99, I
seldom buy any other kind. [laughter] So I usually buy--
A dollar a sheet is about my tops, unless it's for
something very special. And I think printing, no matter--
Whether you're printing damp on handmade paper, or any kind
of paper, it's very hard for anybody to get a good
impression. Pat [Patrick Reagh] will tell you that the
Heidelberg cylinder press will get you a good impression
every time. And he's right. But the rest of us, who don't
have Heidelberg cylinder presses, are going to be fighting
to get a good sharp image no matter what kind of press,
what kind of ink, or what kind of paper we've got to work
with.
ZEIGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: I think it's just part of letterpress printing.
And offset printing has the same problem, but in a
different way.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, of course, I discovered some of that in the
135
printing class last quarter. Could you describe the
process of laying something out, working out the layout for
a book or broadsheet or whatever?
GERRY: More and more, what I do is just write out the
title by hand with a pen, if I want to, say, work on the
title page. I try to save the title page of the book till
the last, because that's sort of the dessert. And I think
the rest of the book may suggest to you a title page.
After you've been through the manuscript, after you've been
through how you're going to plan all the other pages of the
book, the information you've gathered will help you with
the title page. The title page is your tour de force.
Title pages are what we always remember. However, I must
say that as time goes on I'm less interested in making the
title page that ' s going to knock out the eyes of the world
than I once was.
ZIEGLER: Why is that?
GERRY: I don't know. I guess because I know I'm not going
to do it. I've seen so many other title pages that other
people have done that you realize, well, just do a good one
and be glad to get that.
ZIEGLER: Wasn't it Beatrice Warde who said that the layout
and all that shouldn't call attention to itself but call
attention to its content? So you don't want a title page
that is just so striking that that's all you think about.
136
GERRY: She's right, very right. Like Diana [Thomas] said
in the printshop, "It's hard to keep the students from
using every type we ' ve got on each page ! " And so I think
it's sort of the same system. It works in your mind that
eventually, yes, you're less interested in showing off what
you can do and more interested in showing-- You're
interested in not distracting the viewer. This is true of
the motion picture business. This is true of probably any
art or any sort of show business. To try to point the
public's eye to what you want them to see. Printing is no
different. But like I say, if I'm designing something, I
generally just sit down with a pen or a pencil and write it
out by hand. You can see where it can break, or where it
might break, and you try it that way. As opposed to going
with a layout pencil, trying to lay it out full-size with a
T square, and so on, I would just fiddle around, writing it
out with a ballpoint or a pencil. That will suggest things
to you, to the layout person. That's about all I can say
for that.
ZIEGLER: Well, I wonder if you could talk more about
illustrations and how you go about marrying illustrations
to the text--deciding maybe what to illustrate, what
technique is most appropriate for this and so on.
GERRY: Well, I would say in my case, because the
illustration is going to be printed letterpress and maybe
137
not necessarily along with the type-- Because it may
require a lot more ink than the type, you may have to print
it separately. With drawings it's going to be the same
process. So I'm limited to a photo plate, what I can have
made by photo engraving. It can't be a halftone plate
because I don't want to print halftones and I can't print
halftones. So it's going to be a line drawing, now. A
line resolution, shall we say. So it's going to be a
linoleum cut or a wood engraving or a photo engraving. So
that's what I am limited to. Those are fairly graphic. I
think I like illustrations which are graphic. What do I
mean "graphic"? Two-dimensional I guess would be
graphic. Would that be? Something that is not
particularly attempting to be a three-dimensional image,
like a lot of Italian perspective.
ZIEGLER: Something that works as more of a design.
GERRY: More of a design. And I think certain things
vibrate. Certain old woodcuts and wood engravings vibrate
because of the juxtaposition of the little white lines
together. That is sort of the same way that type does. When
you're not reading it you just see it, and it vibrates
because of the little black and white pattern that you see.
Vibrates your eyes and it's sort of pleasing. A person might
try to work something into their illustrations that has a
little vibrant quality like the type does. I don't really
138
have any theory about what should be illustrated. We were
talking about the [Edward] Ardizzone book that I printed
where he tells about book illustrating [On the Illustrating
of Books] . He has very definite views of what should and
should not be illustrated. I don't think I have worked out a
system. I just probably pick something I like in the story
that I think should be illustrated, and I do it by whim, not
by intellect. Just by what appeals to me.
ZIEGLER: I noticed that you often would draw things again
and again and maybe draw a variety of different things for
the same work, and then you would choose only some of them.
GERRY: Years ago I would.
ZIEGLER: In any case, it looked to me like you do it by
sort of drawing out the possibilities and then choosing
among them .
GERRY: Yeah, I think you should explore the possibilities.
Like Ward describes when he started-- It was early typo-
graphic expressions. He would proof the title page and
then he would pin it on the wall until he had a hundred
versions of some slight change on the wall. He said it was
a matter of not being able to decide what he really
wanted. And I think that's true of-- I do draw things out
too much to the point where I miss-- I look back at some of
the drawings for illustrations and I think, "Why didn't I
use that? That's much better than what I finally did use."
139
ZIEGLER: I was reading some about the [Walt] Disney
Studio, and I sort of gathered that Disney works the same
way, that people are encouraged to draw and draw and draw
all sorts of different possibilities and many of them never
get used finally. In fact, many of maybe the best ones
never get used.
GERRY: Well, yeah, there's always that feeling.
ZIEGLER: Putting all the possibilities out on the board to
choose from.
GERRY: There's always that feeling that, well, maybe some
of the best stuff doesn't get used. Yeah, I think book
printing is very much like movie making. Although I didn't
realize until later on that there are all these
possibilities that are available to you and you have to--
In the motion picture business, as opposed to, say,
printing a few hundred copies of a book, it's a lot
different. I mean, you're trying to appeal to a very large
audience, and the larger the audience you appeal to, the
harder it is to get the material and develop it so that the
audience likes it. Anybody can make a picture that will
appeal to their relatives or their buddy across the table
from them. I mean, you can make a motion picture, one that
will appeal to yourself. But to make something that
appeals to a lot of people, it takes a lot of--I hate to
say it--a lot of effort. You have to try a number of
140
different things, and somebody has to pick from all these
to try and make them say, "Yes, this is what we want to
use." And you hear all these stories about "Well, we had
to hire some more writers." "They had ten writers and they
fired that writer." "They got this writer to rewrite this
writer's rewriting." It sounds ridiculous when somebody
tells you this is what they do in Hollywood, but every
picture I have ever worked on, we have done it exactly that
way. Nobody seems to know why.
ZIEGLER: I gather, though, that it's not that the things
that didn't get used were not good, but maybe they didn't
fit in with the story. Maybe there was some really great
scene, well drawn and very comical in itself, but once it
was put together it sort of disrupted the story line.
GERRY: Right, that's usually what happens.
ZIEGLER: I would imagine that something like that happens
in book illustrations. Maybe you've done some drawings,
some great drawings. They just don't quite complement the
layout of the page in the way you want it exactly. Or
maybe they would be too distracting on the page.
GERRY: Exactly. That's where the similarity comes in.
You try to make the book seem, you know, as a whole thing
that kind of fits all together. So a lot of the ideas that
you get, typographic ideas as well as illustrative ideas,
might stand very well on their own, but when it all goes
141
together in one book it might be distracting. All the
other elements might fight together. You don't want that,
because you want the person to read the book and not —
ZIEGLER: Can you think of some cases where you had some
great illustrations that you were just dying to use but had
to give up on them because they didn't all work together
well in the book?
GERRY: No, unless it would probably be every book, every
time I tried to illustrate anything. No. Sometimes the
author has a hand in selecting the illustrations, or the
publisher, and sometimes that goes against your grain. But
in the long run-- I mean, after all, they have the right to
do it.
ZIEGLER: Could you say a little more about that?
GERRY: Pat and I did a book for [Ralph] Sylvester and
[Stathis] Orphanos that was a Tennessee Williams book.
Tennessee Williams had a friend who had made this woodcut,
and he wanted to use it. Well, I think they were obliged
to accommodate Tennessee Williams on this matter because
they had gotten the rights to do this book from him. It
was a book, but it was this short story. In the end we
used the illustration that-- I won't speak for Sylvester
and Orphanos, but Pat and I didn't like it. We didn't
think it was all that appropriate or good. So that was an
incident where the author had the power to force his ideas
142
onto us. But it's not a big deal.
ZIEGLER: You've done quite a bit of job printing, and I
would imagine that occurs even more with job printing than
it does with book printing. That the client has his or her
own ideas and that you really have to work around them,
whether you like it best or not. Is that true?
GERRY: Oh, especially in commercial printing, yes. I
think you're supposed to guide the client along the right
path, and when he gets too far off you just kind of bring
him back. I think you don't have to force your ideas, you
don ' t have to make him be the best typographer in the
world. You just have to make him look pretty good- And if
he wants to do something terribly ridiculous, that's when
you argue. But you can't argue every point because you
personally feel you've got a better idea.
ZIEGLER: Are you willing to talk about any particular
examples?
GERRY: I haven't done that much commercial work, really.
I know Pat's experience with it is you don't regard it the
same way you regard your bookwork or your bookish
printing. It's like something you do-- It comes from the
outsider. It's brought in by the outsider, and they
already have a preconceived idea of how they want it. They
seldom come to you as a printer anymore and say, "Do this
for me." "We have this idea. Our artists did it, and this
143
onto us. But it's not a big deal.
ZIEGLER: You've done quite a bit of job printing, and I
would imagine that occurs even more with job printing than
it does with book printing. That the client has his or her
own ideas and that you really have to work around them,
whether you like it best or not. Is that true?
GERRY: Oh, especially in commercial printing, yes. I
think you ' re supposed to guide the client along the right
path, and when he gets too far off you just kind of bring
him back. I think you don't have to force your ideas, you
don ' t have to make him be the best typographer in the
world. You just have to make him look pretty good. And if
he wants to do something terribly ridiculous, that's when
you argue. But you can't argue every point because you
personally feel you've got a better idea.
ZIEGLER: Are you willing to talk about any particular
examples?
GERRY: I haven't done that much commercial work, really.
I know Pat's experience with it is you don't regard it the
same way you regard your bookwork or your bookish
printing. It's like something you do-- It comes from the
outsider. It's brought in by the outsider, and they
already have a preconceived idea of how they want it. They
seldom come to you as a printer anymore and say, "Do this
for me." "We have this idea. Our artists did it, and this
143
is what we want." As far as commercial printing goes, the
printers themselves may encourage that. I know the Castle
Press, George Kinney, says that they do more-- They welcome
camera-ready copy. They welcome it.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, it certainly cuts down on their work a
lot. I wanted to ask you what illustrators you
particularly admire. You mentioned Ardizzone. Are there
some others?
GERRY: Oh, yeah, Ardizzone. Of course, in the area of
wood engravers, I like [Eric] Ravilious. Ravilious, Eric
Ravilious. He's been dead a long time, but I especially
admire him. And a number of those illustrators that worked
for the Golden Cockerel Press. I can't remember all their
names offhand. Edward Bawden, an English illustrator, who
doesn't do wood engravings. I admire his work very much.
He did a tremendous amount of illustrating over the years,
and then largely bookwork. I don't know. I have an awful
lot of artists that I like and admire. Somehow I can't
remember them now.
In the painting-- Of the California watercolorists, I
like Rex Brandt and that school that's almost gone now.
Milfred Zornes on the very wall out here, I like those, the
California school of watercolor painting. Illustrators,
illustrators. Yeah, there's a lot of them. American
illustrators I like a lot. Damned if I can remember them.
144
is what we want." As far as commercial printing goes, the
printers themselves may encourage that. I know the Castle
Press, George Kinney, says that they do more-- They welcome
camera-ready copy. They welcome it.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, it certainly cuts down on their work a
lot. I wanted to ask you what illustrators you
particularly admire. You mentioned Ardizzone. Are there
some others?
GERRY: Oh, yeah, Ardizzone. Of course, in the area of
wood engravers, I like [Eric] Ravilious. Ravilious, Eric
Ravilious. He's been dead a long time, but I especially
admire him. And a number of those illustrators that worked
for the Golden Cockerel Press. I can't remember all their
names offhand. Edward Bawden, an English illustrator, who
doesn't do wood engravings. I admire his work very much.
He did a tremendous amount of illustrating over the years,
and then largely bookwork. I don't know. I have an awful
lot of artists that I like and admire. Somehow I can't
remember them now.
In the painting-- Of the California watercolorists, I
like Rex Brandt and that school that's almost gone now.
Milfred Zornes on the very wall out here, I like those, the
California school of watercolor painting. Illustrators,
illustrators. Yeah, there's a lot of them. American
illustrators I like a lot. Damned if I can remember them.
144
is what we want." As far as conunercial printing goes, the
printers themselves may encourage that. I know the Castle
Press, George Kinney, says that they do more-- They welcome
camera-ready copy. They welcome it.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, it certainly cuts down on their work a
lot. I wanted to ask you what illustrators you
particularly admire. You mentioned Ardizzone. Are there
some others?
GERRY: Oh, yeah, Ardizzone. Of course, in the area of
wood engravers, I like [Eric] Ravilious. Ravilious, Eric
Ravilious. He's been dead a long time, but I especially
admire him. And a number of those illustrators that worked
for the Golden Cockerel Press. I can't remember all their
names offhand. Edward Bawden, an English illustrator, who
doesn't do wood engravings. I admire his work very much.
He did a tremendous amount of illustrating over the years,
and then largely bookwork. I don't know. I have an awful
lot of artists that I like and admire. Somehow I can't
remember them now.
In the painting— Of the California watercolorists, I
like Rex Brandt and that school that's almost gone now.
Milfred Zornes on the very wall out here, I like those, the
California school of watercolor painting. Illustrators,
illustrators. Yeah, there's a lot of them. American
illustrators I like a lot. Damned if I can remember them.
144
though! I should go home and write all these things down
and come back prepared.
ZIEGLER: I don't know if we'll have another session after
today, although it seems like we have enough material to
keep talking. Maybe if we have another session, if you can
think of some, you can mention them next time. Could you
talk a little about choosing the binding for a book and
deciding how to bind it? What kind of cover, what cover
paper design?
GERRY: Well, a lot of times it's going to be "What does
the customer want to pay?" In my own case, it's "How lazy
am I? How much labor do I want to put into it if I'm going
to bind it myself?" If you have a cloth spine and paper-
covered boards and a round back, there's a lot of labor
involved. More so than a square back, which is full
cloth. So you say, "Well, how much labor do I want to
do?" That is largely the deciding factor. And then one
example I can point out, and others are fairly arbitrary
decisions about binding. "Oh, look, here's a nice paper.
Let's use that. I'll make a nice paste paper." Maybe I'm
in a paste paper mood. That will probably determine what I
was going to use as a binding. If there was something else
I was fond of at the time--
ZIEGLER: I don't know quite what you mean by paste paper.
GERRY: Well, you take some color, like some watercolors
145
and some acrylics, and you mix it with paste. It gives it
a thickness, and you can brush it on and it stays wet. And
you can scrape designs in it with a comb or just the brush
itself.
ZEIGLER: Oh, yeah, I've seen examples of that.
GERRY: It's a fairly fast way of making individual
papers. Or you might want to print a printed pattern
paper, like the little Christmas book. Then you say, "Am I
going to spend that much? How much labor do I want to
do?" Or "Is the customer going to pay for that?" Then you
go to a round back or a straight back. And binders will
say, "I'll do it for the same price. I'll do your round
back just as easy as a square back." But it isn't true — a
round back usually costs more. And the thinner a book, the
harder it is to make it round.
One book I'll say, the book I did of Wilfred Owen's,
War Poems, illustrated by Dale Barnhart. I carefully
selected a cloth which seemed to me the kind of military
color of a soldier's outfit--an olive drab. The bindery
happened to have this particular cloth on hand. It looked
kind of like the color, an olive drab color, of a World War
I outfit. Then I used a plastic spine which was imitation
leather. But, please, it doesn't look as bad as it
sounds. It looks very good,
ZIEGLER: Well, I saw the book.
146
GERRY: That was supposed to be the leather of the
soldier's belt or the officer's belt, and then that
combination of the cloth and the leather was reflecting the
soldier's uniform. Then I gold-stamped the spine. You
could say, "Well, that's the officer's brass insignia."
Then I stamped in a darker brown, which could be the mud of
Flanders, the picture on the cover, which I think was a
soldier's face, as I recall. That was all done to reflect
what was inside the book. Other times I haven't been that--
Well let's see, the book on Miniatures on Modern
Artists; [Some Notes] — Well, let's see, that was a different
paper. That was a compromise paper I had to use later.
Because I ran out of the stuff I'd actually printed. But I
tried to make something that looked modern. It had an Art
Deco look to it. It was done with typographical ornaments
for the miniatures on modern artists, but not always do I
really try to make a big deal out of reflecting what's inside
the book in what's on the binding.
ZIEGLER: You have done some very successful examples of
doing that, though. Spring Barley, Castle and Peacocks on
the Castle Press.
GERRY: Yeah, yeah, that's right. That was an Italian
paper that I had adapted to look like the Castle Press, and
I put the castle in there. John Randle of Matrix magazine
liked that paper, and he wanted me to do a paper for Matrix
147
magazine, a cover paper. So I kept sending him designs.
He says, "No, no. It's more like that other one that you
did for the Dahlstrom book." And finally he said, "No,
just like the one you did for the Dahlstrom book!" So
that's what he finally used.
ZIEGLER: Did you have any of the paper left?
GERRY: No, he was going to have to print it. After all
those-- That's the one he really wanted all along.
ZIEGLER: Well, you mentioned that you do do a lot of
binding yourself, but then you've also mentioned that you
have other people bind your things sometimes. Bela Blau is
one person who I saw mentioned frequently.
GERRY: I like Bela to do my books or my customers' books,
mainly because I have a working relation with him. I mean,
I know him and I can talk to him and we're friends. But
the most important thing about Bela is I know that he will
watch-- Whether he does it himself or not, he will watch my
book all the way through the plant. I don't know any other
binders who I can count on to do that . I did have a book
done by Earl Grey. Now, see, Lillian Marks always used
Earl Grey. They had a rapport. I didn't particularly like
what Earl Grey had done for me.
ZIEGLER: Which one did he do?
GERRY: He made the boxes, [which] were not very well made,
I don't think, for a medieval book on medieval cookery. A^
148
Treatise on the Art and Antiquity of Cookery in the Middle
Ages. But, see, it's probably 80 percent that I know Bela
will watch my book all the way through. He won't just say,
"Here, go do it" to somebody. He'll be doing it himself.
Then it ' s another 20 percent that I know him and I can talk
to him. We have a common language. Even though he speaks
with a very heavy Hungarian accent, we have a common
language. [laughter]
149
TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
MAY 4, 1989
ZIEGLER: I wonder if you could just repeat a little of
what you were saying about why you liked to work with Bela
Blau, because we may have missed it at the end of the tape.
GERRY: Oh, okay. I like Bela as a binder for my own books
as well as customers' books because I can work with him. I
can understand him. We talk together, we're friends. But
most important of all with Bela Blau and A-1 Bookbinders is
Bela will watch the job. If he's not working on it
himself, he keeps an eye on it all the way through the
shop, because he runs a fairly small operation. There's
nothing that goes by him that he doesn ' t see or keep a hand
on or do himself. The other binders are large and fast.
They get the job, and the man you talk to about the job is
not the man that's going to work on it. It's going to go
through a plant, done by people who more or less don't
care, and it's going to look that way. It's perfectly all
right for certain things. But if you're picky and you
don't want to be embarrassed when your client says, "Look,
the book is all stuck together--" "They won't open." "The
glue is squirting out." The this, the that. "They're
upside down." Whatever. You want to avoid that
embarrassment, I always go to have Bela do it. If you can
afford it. He's more expensive, naturally, but not
150
terribly.
ZIEGLER: How big a business does he do? Does he do mostly
small press books, or does he do real large printing?
GERRY: Bela does every kind of binding. He does
commercial hardware catalogs, portfolios. Anything he'll
do. He does a lot of miniature books. He's a specialist
in miniature books.
ZIEGLER: They must be harder to bind as well as to print,
aren ' t they?
GERRY: Oh, yeah. You have to have the right temperament
to bind miniature books. He does. That's one of his main
specialties. But I'm sure that's not what he makes his
living on. He makes his living on doing catalog covers.
You know, gold-stamping material and embossing and heavy-
duty catalogs. Any kind of commercial binding he does.
But he also does good bookbinding.
ZIEGLER: Do you ever use Kater Craft binders?
GERRY: I have in the past. I know Mel [Kavin] . But, now,
there's an example. For all of Mel's caring about it and
all of his knowledge of binding, when it goes to Mel's it's
a big plant. It's got forty people, sixty people in
there. He cannot possibly watch everything. They do
excellent library binders, and their fine book department
is really special. But I think it's too expensive for me
to go to the fine book department.
151
ZIEGLER: The Clark [Library] uses them a lot.
GERRY: They do a lot of restoration work. Excellent,
excellent. There are certain things I would be glad to
send to Mel and Kater Crafts.
ZIEGLER: What's Mel's full name?
GERRY : Mel Kavin . I don ' t know whether he ' s a Melvin or
what. I never found that out. I always knew him as Mel.
And Mel is a real friend of the printing business. Mel is
very interested in the subject and very active and has a
marvelous little library in history down at the plant--I
think they take students through there sometimes- -the
history of binding and printing.
ZIEGLER: Where is his plant located?
GERRY: Pico Rivera, just north of Whittier Boulevard, I
believe.
ZIEGLER: I wonder if we could talk a little more about
commercial printing. You have done a fair amount, judging
from the things I saw at the Clark. Well, I don't quite
know by what measure you would say what is a fair amount,
but I noticed you have done quite a few jobs. Some of the
things I saw were Christmas cards and stationery, catalogs,
gallery announcements, wine and food labels,
advertisements, campaign literature for David Hitchcock.
Are there others?
GERRY: No, that sounds about it. A lot of it was done for
152
friends. Or people would say, "Oh, you're a printer! I
want you to do a letterhead for me." Well, usually when I
did most of those things, it was because I was trying to
make the shop pay for itself, so I wouldn't turn down
anything. But nowadays I don't worry about that, and if
people want letterheads done, they really have to twist my
arm or catch me off guard. In fact, I can't do them
because I don't even have a press to do them on anymore.
ZIEGLER: It looked to me like you did a fair amount of
commercial printing for people at the Disney Studios.
GERRY: Yes, there was one customer I had who was very
helpful in helping to support the press. He would do a lot
of joking. He was a writer, a screenwriter, and he was
constantly playing practical jokes on his friends.
ZIEGLER: Who was that?
GERRY: His name was Larry Clemmons. He wrote a lot of
cartoons, and he used to begin-- He had worked at the
studio in the early thirties, and then he left the studio
and came back in the fifties I think. He was primarily
writing Walt [Disney] 's introductions to the television
shows, and then he got into the cartoon department and was
our chief writer for years. So he was always coming to me
because he wanted to play this joke on somebody. They were
usually very inside jokes that required a special
letterhead, and he would write up this letter and then mail
153
it to this particular person. In one instance, we actually
faked a column in the Hollywood Reporter. I printed it on
a piece of coated paper, and we tore it and we imitated
their style of printing just as much as I could and
everything just as much as we could. We did a lot of
that. Larry did a lot of that stuff. Sometimes I'd make
linoleum cuts for the letterheads. He got a great deal of
enjoyment out of that, and he always paid me to do it. I
mean, I can't think that it was that much money, but we did
a lot of that sort of thing. I can't remember any
particular one. There was one from the Lompoc Jail. The
letterhead said Lompoc Jail, so-and-so street. And it had
some device on there that was like a jail.
ZIEGLER: That must have been a bit of a shock for the
person who got it. These elaborate practical jokes
happened every so often around the Disney Studios, didn't
they? I read somewhere- -
GERRY: Yeah, I think they did. I think all the studios —
Everybody jokes around wherever they work, I think. But
these were somewhat more elaborate. Maybe because the
group of guys he was with were always doing that, making
jokes about whatever picture they were working on or
whatever pictures they were rumored to be working on.
Whatever would come up to suggest a joke.
I really didn't do too much-- I was intrigued with
154
designing commercial printing for quite a while. When I
was in art school, I think I did some. In advertising-
design classes, I did some typography for commercial
work. Until I got interested in books, that's about all I
was interested in, an advertising sort of typography.
ZIEGLER: And what would you say the main considerations
are for commercial printing? I would guess that they're
different from the considerations for books.
GERRY: Well, probably the tyranny of the times, of the
fashion, is probably what leads you in that kind of
printing. Everybody is following the lead guy, whoever
everybody admires, because that is what the customers
want. So I think that would probably be the foremost, and
then I think you probably want to have-- Whereas in the
case of the book you are trying not to divert the person
away, not trying to catch the person's eye with the
typography, you are trying to in advertising. You are
trying to compete with everybody else around there. You
want something that's going to catch the person's eye. I
think they're all designed to reach the audience they're
looking for. Mail-order ads don't look that way because
the designer didn't know any better; they look that way
because that ' s what the people they ' re trying to reach
expect a mail-order ad to look like. I learned that in
advertising school. [laughter] Advertising art.
155
TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
MAY 18, 1989
ZEIGLER: Our last interview we talked some about different
book designers and illustrators that you particularly
admired, but you were going to think of some more and we
were going to talk some more about that this time.
GERRY: Okay. I think the ones I admire the most are the
ones that probably everyone else does. We may have already
mentioned them, but certainly [William A.] Dwiggins and
Bruce Rogers and [Peter] Bielenson of the Peter Pauper
Press are who I admire. And I have probably stolen from
them as much as anybody else. Of course there is Oliver
Simon of the Curwen Press. I very much admire the work
that the Curwen Press did, as well as some other English
presses. But mostly the Curwen Press. Then also another
one would be the Nonesuch Press, with Francis Meynell as
the designer, I'm not saying they've really-- They've
influenced me indirectly.
ZEIGLER: You've learned from them, yeah.
GERRY: They've given me good examples. Then I think I
should probably also mention Stanley Morison, who initiated
the types that we like the best, that have stood up the
longest in the twentieth century, that he had made for the
Monotype [Corporation] in England. Those are types we all
know and admire the most. So I think I should give him a
156
line of credit as someone establishing something to look up
to.
ZEIGLER: Could you say a little more about the style that
you especially admire at the Curwen Press and the Nonesuch
Press?
GERRY: I guess you'd have to say it was twentieth-century
style, probably, with a little modern art influence in
it. The combination of type and decoration, or type and
pictorial matter, appeals to me. And Curwen did a lot of
that. I think those are the most influential. Now, I
didn't mention--but, of course, I have mentioned also
before--the local people. They probably directly
influenced my work more because we work with the same kind
of materials. They would be Ward Ritchie and Grant
Dahlstrom and even Saul Marks to a good extent--although I
always felt that Saul Marks was a little bit beyond
reach. But Ward and Grant had-- They were more like real
printers. There was something there that was tangible that
I might achieve. I might do something like they did,
although I never did, but at least I thought I could. The
use of the Linotype machine and the small caps and the
italic in roman and one single face. It was what these
three men did. I mean, not that other people didn't do it
also, but that was the book-oriented influence they had on
California printers. Southern California printers. I think
157
I should mention those.
ZEIGLER: Why do you describe Saul Marks as beyond reach?
What do you mean by that?
GERRY: He was just so good, such a great printer, such a
perfect printer, that I would tend to back off and say,
"Gee, that's nice, but I would never be able to do anything
like that." It's perfect presswork, much better presswork
than the other two fellows, Ritchie and Dahlstrom. But, of
course, Saul did everything himself. Whereas Ritchie and
Dahlstrom had employees to do the work, and they turned out
a larger volume of work than Saul ever did. Saul's work
was practically hand printed. He also took advantage of
using the Monotype machine to set the type, which gave him
the faces and a much better-- The machine had much less
limitations than the Linotype machine. It took a lot more
work, but he was willing to do that to get the better
looking printing. And he had access, of course, to the
faces. I mention that Morison had supervised the
designing. That would be Bembo, Arrighi, Poliphilus. I
guess Times roman. I'm sure I'm leaving out some.
Fournier. All Monotype faces. I'm sure I've left some
out. I guess I've explained why.
ZEIGLER: How well did you know Saul Marks? Did you even
work with him?
GERRY: I didn't know Saul Marks. I don't think he would
158
ever remember my name. I talked to him. He was a member
of the Rounce and Coffin Club. I did talk to him a couple
of times. I went to his shop once to get some advice on a
printing press. And like I said before, he once defended
one of my books at the Western Books Exhibition.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, you mentioned that, that he convinced them
that it was a book.
GERRY: But I didn't know him. He died in '74, about the
time I was just getting started.
ZEIGLER: You've had more contact with Lillian Marks,
though, haven't you? I think you mentioned that.
GERRY: No, not really so much. She went out of business
about the time Pat [Patrick Reagh] and I started. We
bought her press, the Heidelberg cylinder press, and then
she stayed in business for a while doing small-order
things. I think she wanted to retire. Eventually, she
sold off her shop.
ZEIGLER: Could you say a little more about your contact
with Ward Ritchie? Have you ever done any joint projects
with him?
GERRY: No, I never really worked with Ward. He was a guy
I had never met . I had sent out a brochure for a book I ' d
done. The [Ernest A.] Lindner Collection of Antique
[Printing] Machinery. Ward was on one of the mailing
lists. And, lo and behold, one day this man comes up the
159
driveway of my house. I was just about to go off on a
bicycle ride. This man came up the driveway and he said,
"I'm Ward Ritchie." I'd never met him; I'd always heard
about him. I was really astounded, so I took him in and
showed him my shop. He was going to buy the book and he
didn't have any change, so I said, "Well, just take it and
pay me some other time." He said, "I'll send you some
books." So he sent me a book that he did called Influences
on California Printing, or something like that, that he
printed. It was a couple of-- One of the papers that he
read and then one that James D. Hart read. And in it he
had the bibliography of the Primavera Press, which was a
press that Jake [Zeitlin] had started. They'd had a little
partnership.
ZEIGLER: Who was Jake's printer? Who was the printer for
the Primavera Press? Did he print himself at all?
GERRY: No. Jake never printed. I don't think Jake was at
all handy with his hands. He was a poet and a book
salesman, I mean a bookseller. I don't think he was much
on handiwork. As far as the Primavera Press goes, I think
Ward printed some of them but not all of them. They were,
as I understand it, always looking for a cheaper printer.
They even got the Business Printers in Pasadena, which
later was the home office of the San Pasqual Press, to do
some work for Primavera. Two or three books they did.
160
China Boy was one. But I think Ward was likely to be in
charge of the design of the books for Primavera. Besides
the Primavera Press, which finally went under around 1939,
Jake published a lot of books, and he used the local
printers. He was very good to printers, and when Pat and I
started in ' 80 or '81, he had a large book for us to do.
Letters of Saint Jerome, which was a leaf book. He spent a
lot of money on that, and he had a lot of trouble with
that, too, in that he had Max Adjarian bind it and they had
some kind of terrible fight over the quality of the
binding.
ZEIGLER: Who were the binders?
GERRY: Max Adjarian. He lives up in middle California
somewhere. Then after the book was all set and corrected,
we found it had never been edited, so it had to go through
and be edited. There were a lot of problems, for Jake as
well as for everyone else, but he was the one who had to
pay for them. He was good to everybody. Grant printed
books for him. Ward printed books for him, and of course
Saul printed books for him, as well as others.
ZEIGLER: For the tape, let's say what a leaf book is. I
think I understand. It's a leaf from an old book, and then
a commentary has been written on it and it gets like a
folder containing that leaf plus the commentary. Is that
right?
161
GERRY: Yes, that's right. This particular book had three
essays on the letters of Saint Jerome. And the printed
sheet that was included-- I remember going to Jake's when
they tore this book apart that was printed in 1468, I
believe, very soon after the beginnings of printing. He
was pulling the book apart to get the leaves out of it. It
was not often-- Probably never in my life will I ever sit
down again with someone and pull apart a fifteenth-century
book.
ZEIGLER: Yeah. Was it an incomplete copy?
GERRY: Yes.
ZEIGLER: That's sort of understandable, then, if you don't
have a complete copy.
GERRY: Right, right. I don't mean tearing, ripping. I
just mean pulling it apart carefully. And Jake said, "Go
through here and pick out the leaf you would like to
have." I picked out one that had three hand- lettered
initials on it, which I thought was very generous of him.
ZEIGLER: Yes. So you got an original leaf from this. So
in a leaf book, each copy of the book has a different leaf.
GERRY: Yes, each has one leaf from the book, one page from
the book. It's a common way of passing on-- People can get
a taste of a famous book, or an old book from the
incunabula, without having to afford the full book. I
think, for instance, the Gutenberg Bible, they're selling
162
it by the word.
ZEIGLER: [laughter] Not by the letter yet?
GERRY: [laughter] No, but possibly that's the next thing.
ZEIGLER: I think it was last interview you were talking
about the Rounce and Coffin Club and the old days, and you
spoke of "the big three." I wondered who you meant by
that?
GERRY: I guess I mean now Ward Ritchie and Saul Marks and
Grant Dahlstrom. And of course Jake Zeitlin was someone,
so it should be "the big four" I guess. But then Larry
[Lawrence Clark] Powell had something to do with it. He
was one of the earlier members, and so was Paul Landacre.
I wasn't in on that. That was long before I started. I
didn't get into the club until the seventies, I think.
ZEIGLER: Well, maybe we can talk a little more about the
Rounce and Coffin Club. What has it been doing in the time
that you've been a member?
GERRY: We used to do more. We used to have more meetings
and get-togethers, and people would give a little talk or
we'd have a dinner. But mostly what the Rounce and Coffin
Club does is sponsor and arrange and put together the
Western Books Exhibition, which is an exhibition of books
made in the West. More and more books are being made all
over the world. You might have the typesetting done in
Texas and the printing done in Tennessee and the binding
163
done in Korea, or vice versa.
ZEIGLER: So it's complicated to define a western book now?
GERRY: So the Western Book group has argued back and forth
as to maybe we should expand the entrance requirements so
you can have the book printed anywhere in the world or
bound anywhere in the world, but it has to originate in
these western states.
ZEIGLER: What do they think of as the cutoff point for the
western states?
GERRY: I wish I could tell you.
ZEIGLER: The Mississippi? They just sort of leave it, so
they can include what they like?
GERRY: Maybe to New Mexico and Nevada, around those
states. Then it goes out to, I think, Alaska and the
Hawaiian Islands. I think that's all.
I forget what I was saying.
ZEIGLER: Well, you were saying how books are done all over
the world now, so it becomes a problem to say what's a
western book.
GERRY: Oh, yeah. When the Western Books Exhibition
started in 1938, the books printed in the West were not all
that common, and they were trying to promote themselves and
to show that, yes, the West could make books just as well
as they could in the East. The East was, and still is, the
big book-manufacturing part of the country. So, anyway.
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recently the Western Books [Exhibition] has come to kind of
an unwritten agreement that we're going back to the old--
Definitely the book has to be made and manufactured,
designed and published in the western states. And that
limits us in some respects, but also I think it may attract
more local people.
ZEIGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: And smaller printers and limited edition printers,
if we do that.
ZEIGLER: Is there some sort of similar contest for the
eastern states or for the whole United States? I'm new to
the whole area.
GERRY: I think that the lAGA, the International Alliance
of Graphic Artists, has a show every year of books for the
book show. They also do a lot of advertising-art shows.
They are interested in graphic arts, but they also have a
book show. To be in that is always prestigious. I guess
not quite so much as it once was. But I remember a piece
of ephemera that Gregg Anderson had printed, that they were
going to kick Grant Dahlstrom out of the Rounce and Coffin
Club because his books had appeared too frequently in the
lAGA show and they were jealous. They were going to kick
him out.
ZEIGLER: [laughter] Seriously?
GERRY: It was just a joke. It was like a broadside he had
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printed announcing Grant Dahlstrom would be kicked out.
ZEIGLER: I thought it sounded like a typical Rounce and
Coffin Club joke.
GERRY: Well, they don't do too much joking anymore. Not
like they once did.
ZEIGLER: Is there any worldwide organization that chooses
the best books printed?
GERRY: I'm sure there is, but I couldn't tell you which
one. I couldn't tell you the name of it, but I'm sure
there must be an international show somewhere.
ZEIGLER: Could you tell me a little more about judging the
Western Books Exhibition? Are the judges generally members
of the Rounce and Coffin Club?
GERRY: Judges are always members. Well, no, I won't say
always. Sometimes there are guests invited to be judges,
but largely they're from the Rounce and Coffin Club. And I
think they generally try to have a printer and a
librarian. You know, a rounded-out group, not just all
printers or all binders or all collectors.
ZEIGLER: Have you been a judge yourself?
GERRY: Yeah, I've been a judge a couple of times. I like
it especially because you can see firsthand every book
that's been submitted. And then as far as the judging
goes, I think everybody has their own criteria, what they
like and what they don't like. Naturally, anything that's
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printed announcing Grant Dahlstrom would be kicked out.
ZEIGLER: I thought it sounded like a typical Rounce and
Coffin Club joke.
GERRY: Well, they don't do too much joking anymore. Not
like they once did.
ZEIGLER: Is there any worldwide organization that chooses
the best books printed?
GERRY: I'm sure there is, but I couldn't tell you which
one. I couldn't tell you the name of it, but I'm sure
there must be an international show somewhere.
ZEIGLER: Could you tell me a little more about judging the
Western Books Exhibition? Are the judges generally members
of the Rounce and Coffin Club?
GERRY: Judges are always members. Well, no, I won't say
always. Sometimes there are guests invited to be judges,
but largely they're from the Rounce and Coffin Club. And I
think they generally try to have a printer and a
librarian. You know, a rounded-out group, not just all
printers or all binders or all collectors.
ZEIGLER: Have you been a judge yourself?
GERRY: Yeah, I've been a judge a couple of times. I like
it especially because you can see firsthand every book
that's been submitted. And then as far as the judging
goes, I think everybody has their own criteria, what they
like and what they don't like. Naturally, anything that's
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offensive to the eye of the book lover is questioned and
pretty much follows the traditional lines of book-printing
design. It's not a contest; it's merely a contest to get
in the show. There's no first, second, or third place.
You either get in the show or you don't. So there are
usually around fifty books from the West that make it. And
out of those I'd say, depending on the year-- There are not
that many rejects, I don't think. Out of fifty books,
there might be ten rejects. If there are fifty books that
are going to be in the show, there might be ten on the
other table that have been rejected. And you can argue
these books as many times as you want with the other
members if you feel they should be in. So it's a pretty
good system. Sometimes you vote by a one to ten, or you
just vote in and out. It depends on whoever is running the
judging that year. They usually set up the criteria, how
to judge it. But in the end, it's pretty much up to each
individual's taste. What he thinks is right.
ZEIGLER: Yeah. What do you mean when you say offensive to
the eye of a book lover?
GERRY: Well, as in the margins are not traditional or the
margins are distracting. If the pages bounce up and down
because the book wasn't folded right or wasn't printed
exactly right. Or oddities of lettering. Or peculiar uses
of type, I suppose.
167
ZEIGLER: I'd like to have you look at the printing of the
[UCLA] library school students and tell us which would get
in and which wouldn't. [laughter]
GERRY: I liked all those examples I saw in the hallway.
Those were very good.
A lot of times judges tend to reject books because
they're ordinary, and then you have to argue the book in.
So ordinary is not a reason to reject a book. Dahlstrom
said, "If the book meets its typographical responsi-
bilities, it's a successful book." And so just because a
book doesn't knock your eyes out--like a Saul Marks book or
a Bruce Rogers book--doesn' t mean it should be rejected
just because it's not as breathtaking.
ZEIGLER: By "meets its typographical responsibilities,"
you mean essentially what Beatrice Warde said, that it
conveys the content without distracting from the content.
GERRY: Yes. I've seen books rejected that had a very
difficult subject matter with thousands of pictures with
many notations. The judge tends to look at this book and
think, "This is a boring book." But the man who designed
it put in a great deal of effort to make you be able to
even comprehend what he's got in there. Like, say, for
instance, if it's a book on seashells or something of that
nature, well, you've got thousands and thousands of shells
that all have to be arranged with notes and text and
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figures on every one. It's a very difficult book to
design, but it's never going to look as good as — It's
never going to make you say, "Wow, what a title page! It
looks just like a Bruce Rogers. It's a beautiful thing."
But it has lived up to its typographical responsi-
bilities. Judges want every book to look like a Grabhorn
[Press] or a Saul Marks. There aren't that many that look
that way.
ZEIGLER: As you say, a lot of them have no particular
reason to look that way. But what about something that
really, maybe, offends the canons of how you make a book,
but seems to be doing it for a deliberate artistic
reason? I mean, say it has very narrow margins because for
some reason the printer thought it would convey the idea
that he wanted to have a very solidly printed page with no
white on it.
GERRY: I think more and more books are being accepted that
wouldn't have been accepted in the past, that are
innovative. We may have been more cautious in the past.
We do accept-- I think the judges accept books that are
more on the bizarre side, with plastic covers and spiral-
bound and with a multitude of different mediums, silk-
screening and hand stenciling. And picture books, maybe,
that might not qualify.
ZEIGLER: What about the whole realm of artists' books?
169
You get some really weird things in that because it's not
really a book so much as it is a sculpture.
GERRY: I think we're going to see--I hope to see--more of
those come the way of the Western Books. I guess the main
reason they won't is because a lot of those are only one
copy. They are one-of-a-kind books; they're not really
published.
ZEIGLER: Do you have a rule that it has to have been
produced in multiple copies?
GERRY: It's an unwritten rule, I think. I tend to think
of books that are published in a number. I mean, the
number could be twenty- five, but one book I think falls
into the realm of an object of art rather than a book.
ZEIGLER: What are some of the most outstanding books or
books that you especially remember from either the years
you were judging or from any other Western Books
Exhibitions?
GERRY: Gosh, I don't think I could-- There were so many of
them. I really couldn't say. I'd have to have a list or
go through the collection. I'm sure there's one that I
could mention, but I can't right offhand.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, I didn't give you forewarning about this
question. Los Angeles is really a pretty major center of
printing in the United States now, isn't it? Of fine
printing or limited edition printing, isn't it?
170
GERRY: Well, yes. I think there are a lot of people who
do hand printing that do fine hand printing and fine hand
binding here in Los Angeles. But it's usually very, very
limited work. I mean limited production. The fine
printers that do books, with the exception of Pat Reagh,
are all offset printers, which is not to say that is
wrong. It's just a different technology than we are used
to. There are very few books printed letterpress
anymore. So we're just waiting for some innovator, I
think, to come along and exploit the offset process and
make it really work in the book field and amaze us. Well,
like some of the people doing letterpress had in the
past. At least that's what I'm waiting for. I often think
I'll try it myself, but I haven't. There are lots of
binders around here that are really terrific binders and a
lot of really terrific printers. Most of the fine printers
do not turn out that much work. Pat Reagh 's the only one I
can think of. He has to do, like I guess they all had to
do, a volume of commercial work to support themselves. The
books just don't come around that often to be printed.
ZEIGLER: Can you form some sense of what other areas in
the West are major printing centers on the basis of your
involvement with the Western Books Exhibition?
GERRY: Well, San Francisco for sure. They have always
been tops in fine printing in California and I think in
171
even the western states. They don't seem to be doing quite
as much as they had in the past, yet they still are
going. The Arion Press and Wesley Tanner and Jack [W.]
Stauffacher. Jack Stauffacher probably isn't as active as
he once was, but certainly Wesley Tanner and a number of
others whose names I can't remember are active in San
Francisco.
ZEIGLER: Have you met some of these San Francisco
printers?
GERRY: Yes, Wesley Tanner I've met. I knew Adrian Wilson
for a little bit. I don't think he knew my name, but we
had talked together a couple of times. Right in the middle
of the Grabhorns? That's about all.
ZEIGLER: Let's see, I had here a list of printers in the
Los Angeles area that I was going to ask about. And some
of these may be, sort of, before your time, but-- Well,
we've already talked about a lot of them too, but did you
ever know Gregg Anderson?
GERRY: No, Gregg I didn't know. I just knew of him. See,
he was killed in the war.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, he died pretty young, didn't he?
GERRY: He was maybe not forty yet when he died in World
War II.
ZEIGLER: And that was just about the time you were
starting out as an apprentice with Grant, wasn't it'
172
-o
GERRY: Yeah, I guess so. He died in the D day landing, so
he was in the army when I started with Grant. I don't
know, I guess it was a patriotic thing, because he was not
a young man. He was younger than Grant, but he was
probably in his late thirties when he went into the army on
a volunteer basis. And he seemed to enjoy it from the
letters I've read. But I didn't know him, just knew of
him.
ZEIGLER: Did you know Alvin Lustig?
GERRY: No, Alvin was before my time. By the time I became
aware of Alvin, he was a top designer in New York and one
that our advertising-design teachers would often refer to
when I was in school at the Chouinard school [Chouinard Art
Institute] . Lustig was kind of a real hot-dog designer
then.
ZEIGLER: What about Merle Armitage?
GERRY: No, Armitage I never knew either.
ZEIGLER: He tended to do very melodramatic things, didn't
he?
GERRY: Well, he tended to do what he called modern books,
design modern books. He liked to use sans serif types in
his books. Although Grant claims that Armitage in the late
twenties had given a lecture called "The Heritage of Modern
Art" or something-- forgive me on the title--and had decided
to have it printed. Grant Dahlstrom designed it, and it
173
was designed-- What Merle wanted was something very modern,
and Grant designed this. Grant always claimed that's where
Merle got all of his ideas for how he would design the rest
of his books, from this thing that Grant had done. But I
don't know how true that is or not. It was called-- What
was it? The Heritage of Art or something. Grant designed
it, and I think they printed it at [Bruce] McCallister ' s.
ZEIGLER: I may have seen it at the Clark, but I don't
remember the title.
GERRY: It's all in black with a little white pasted label
on the cover. It's a black paper cover with a little white
pasted label done by Grace Marion Brown, some design she
did.
ZEIGLER: I haven't heard of her. Could you tell me a
little about her?
GERRY: I know absolutely nothing about her, I'm sorry. I
just associate her name with that particular book, which is
really a booklet or a pamphlet. I think she designed a
cricket or a grasshopper, some sort of bug, for Jake
Zeitlin. And he used it as his trademark off and on.
That's all I know of her.
ZEIGLER: Let's see, would you have known Bruce
McCallister, or was he too early for you?
GERRY: He may have come into the shop there when I was
working for Grant in the forties, but I don't remember
174
him. I just, you know, know of him. Grant used to talk
very highly of him. Grant had spent a large part of his
career in conjunction with Bruce McCallister. I think from
'27 to '43, they worked together off and on.
ZEIGLER Do you have some sense of what his influence was
on Los Angeles printing?
GERRY: Yeah, he was a promoter of fine printing, and at
every opportunity he produced fine printing, but he was
himself not so much a printer as he was a good
businessman. But what he knew, he knew good printing when
he saw it. That's why he latched onto Grant when Grant
came to California, and forever after whatever McCallister
did that stands out was designed by Grant for him.
ZEIGLER: Well, first of all, something I've been kind of
curious about is it seems that within the Los Angeles area,
Pasadena is really a center for printers. Why do you think
that is?
GERRY: I'd never thought of that. Well, there was the
first Castle Press with Roscoe Thomas and House Olson--
Olson was a darned good typographer- -and then Grant took
that over. Then there was [Scott E.] Haselton. He's the
only other printer who did books that I know of in
Pasadena.
ZEIGLER: Well, and then there's you.
GERRY: Yeah, but I was a lot later. See, they'd all--
175
Well, no. Grant was printing. The Castle Press is still
going with its third set of owners--and very successfully,
I might add--up in Altadena. I guess it's still Pasadena.
ZEIGLER: Has the Castle Press maintained any continuity of
style through its different owners, or has it really sort
of become a different press with each different set of
owners?
GERRY: I think it's really become a very expanded press.
They do a lot more color work and less bookwork. But
whenever they do books, they do-- If there's any
continuity, I think it goes through George Kinney. He's
fond of fine printing. Although he is more of a commercial
printer, he's very fond of fine printing. He's had his
hand in fine printing, having apprenticed, I think,
somewhat with Paul Bailey of the Western Lore Press. But
Elva Marshall is usually the designer. She's been with the
Castle Press quite a number of years and was a long time
with Grant. She does most of the designing when it comes
to books , I don ' t think that George seeks out books to do
like, say, for instance. Grant did. But as for printers of
Pasadena, I don't know. Other than Haselton--
ZEIGLER: It's also been a center for bibliophiles, too,
hasn't it?
GERRY: Well, the Huntington Library.
ZEIGLER: Lawrence Clark Powell was there. And the
176
Huntington and Occidental College have been a center for
interest.
GERRY: Well, I guess you could say Clyde Browne [Abbey of
San Encino Press] was pretty close to Pasadena, being in
Garvanza, which is like on the outskirts of Pasadena near
Highland Park, adjacent to Pasadena. Then I guess there
were some printers out by Claremont, the Saunders Studio
Press, and Thomas Williams and the Fine Arts Press was in
Santa Ana. I guess it was. But that's all I can think of
in Pasadena.
ZEIGLER: Well, could you talk a little about some of the
booksellers you've known? We've already mentioned quite a
few of them, Jake Zeitlin and Glen Dawson and Jim [James
E.] Lorson. Could you maybe tell a little more about them
and any others and sort of what you think their influence
is on printing in Los Angeles?
GERRY: Oh, certainly the Dawsons are very influential in
that they do-- I don't mean to say that they influence the
way printing looks, but they publish quite a bit of
material and they use local printers, Los Angeles and
Pasadena printers. They're the friends of printers. The
bookshop itself is a friend. It has a fine printing
department, books about printing, books about books. And
like I say, they sent a lot of printing work out in terms
of books like-- The Baja California travel series is going
177
on and on. I can't remember how many of them there are.
There might be sixty of them. Then there are a number of
informal series on Los Angeles artists. Somebody local
will print those. I've printed one. Dick [Richard]
Hoffman prints an awful lot of books where they--
ZEIGLER: Which is the one you printed?
GERRY: I did one called House Olson, [Printer] .
ZEIGLER: Oh, yeah.
GERRY: That David W. Davies wrote. And I designed one
about Ward Ritchie that Pat Reagh printed and Davies
wrote. There may be another one I was involved with. I
can't remember right off. And also Dawson's easily handles
the kinds of books I like to buy. So I think they're very
influential. Now Jake is gone and the store is gone. But
he was the same way. He was very friendly to local
printers, printers who did good work. He always tried to
help them by giving them jobs or giving them books to do.
ZEIGLER: Would it be fair to say that Dawson's and Jake
Zeitlin's, between them, have done a lot to teach Los
Angeles printers about the whole tradition of printing?
GERRY: Right. By making books available for sale that are
on the subject and by having people give talks at the
bookstore. I mean, I'm sure that's good business, but it's
also very promotional of good printing.
ZEIGLER: Yes.
178
GERRY: I think Jim [James E.] Lorson to a certain extent
does the same thing, although he's a newer book dealer.
He's in Fullerton, but he sought me out and bought books
from me and is still trying to sell some of them. He has
had a few things published. We did a leaf book for him. I
designed it and Pat printed it. It was an extensive leaf
book. I mean, it might have been rather a large,
inexpensive book on Mercator, and it had a map as a leaf.
ZEIGLER: That was a famous early atlas, wasn't it?
GERRY: Right. And other things Jim has published and had
other local printers do for him.
ZEIGLER: Is there any other bookseller around who is sort
of playing the same role that Jim Lorson is playing?
GERRY: Well, Bill [William] Dailey, I think, has the kind
of shop that has the books in it. He's just so far away
that I hardly ever go there. I mean, to me far away is way
out on Melrose [Avenue] .
ZEIGLER: Yeah, I go to Dailey 's [William and Victoria
Dailey Rare Books and Fine Prints] quite a bit.
GERRY: Dailey encourages printers. He did a lot of stuff
to get Pat going.
ZEIGLER: Last time I was there, he had a beautiful bag
that had a print of a mountain scene on it. I wondered who
printed that. I wonder if you happen to know.
GERRY: A bag? You mean like a paper bag?
179
ZEIGLER: Just a paper bag to put your purchase in, but it
was so beautifully printed that I asked for an extra one.
GERRY: He might have done it himself. He has his own
printshop.
ZEIGLER: Oh, I didn't know that.
GERRY: I suppose there are others around. I can't--
ZEIGLER: What about the — ? There's a collection of
bookstores in Santa Monica now. Do they get involved at
all in printing activities or encouraging printing?
GERRY: Kenneth Karmiole has printed a number of leaf
books, and I think Pat has printed at least two of them,
Pat Reagh. And George [J.] Houle sometimes publishes
something. I can't really say much more than that.
ZEIGLER: Would you say there is anyone who looks like
being the successor to Jake Zeitlin? Sort of stepping into
the enormous role that he played in the book world in Los
Angeles?
GERRY: Oh, I don't know. I guess the closest thing would
be Jeff Weber, who worked for Jake for so many years. He
now has his own bookshop. Now, whether he aspires to be
like Jake or not, I don't know. I know he has some nice
books like Jake used to have. He doesn't have a junky
stock. I shouldn't say junky. His books tend to be the
higher-priced books, like Jake often had.
ZEIGLER: Does he have printing done for him? I've seen a
180
few of his catalogs at the Clark. They're very handsomely
produced catalogs.
GERRY: Oh, I think he tends to go to offset printers for a
catalog, naturally. Yes, he's given me work designing some
things for him.
ZEIGLER: What are some of the things?
GERRY: Well, I did a little map of how to get to his house
where he has his bookshop. I can't remember. Odds and
ends of things for him.
ZEIGLER: Could you tell me--
GERRY: But whether he wants to be like Jake or not, I
don't know. I'm just saying that he learned his trade from
Jake, but he did not buy any of the stock or get any breaks
from Jake's estate. He started from scratch himself.
ZEIGLER I guess there are quite a few people about whom
you could say they learned their trade from Jake, aren't
there? With the San Pasqual Press, Laura Dorothy Bevis--
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TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
MAY 18, 1989
ZEIGLER: Okay, I mistakenly said that Laura Dorothy Bevis
worked for Zeitlin, and you pointed out that she worked for
Dawson's. Well, maybe you can think of other people that
have worked for either Zeitlin or Dawson's or any of these
other booksellers.
GERRY: Well, Jake seems to have made more book dealers
than anybody else, at least to my knowledge. Now, Gary
Steiger worked for Jake for a while. Then he left for the
East — I wish I could say where, Iowa or something like
that- -where he has a bookstore. Then Michael Thompson
apprenticed with Jake, and he has a store on Melrose
[Avenue], a bookstore. And Jeff Weber. And there were a
couple of others who worked with Jake and went off and
started their own bookstores. So he must have made it seem
like it's fun to have a bookstore.
ZEIGLER: [laughter] I never met him. I gather he was a
very enthusiastic and fun-loving man. Was he?
GERRY: Yeah. Of course, when I knew him he was in his
later years. But he loved a good joke, and he was very
generous and warm. And I was always amazed that he knew
almost everybody in the world, but in a very unimpressive
way. I mean to say he was not a name-dropper or
anything. He seemed to know everybody and to treat
182
everybody equally, no matter what their status.
I remember Dreyfus had come to town for some reason,
John Dreyfus, and Jake--this was soon after Grant died —
wanted to have a breakfast in his honor. So he invited Pat
and myself down to the Scandia restaurant for breakfast
with John Dreyfus. I guess it would be a brunch. They had
a number of people there. I brought along Mrs. Dahlstrom,
who was a friend of Dreyfus and she wanted to see him.
Grant had died maybe only months before. So I brought her
along. He was generous in that sort of way, getting people
together.
But I'll tell you, he was a shrewd book dealer. I
always love to tell the story that he had contacted me to
do a compliment card with a little envelope. It was a very
simple job, but we hashed it over a couple of times and I
was in the mood one gets in- -no matter what business
they're in--that they're not going to be taken for a ride
on this job. They're going to charge what the job is
worth. Occasionally it comes across, for instance in mine,
that they've been cheating themselves. So I'm going to
charge Jake what this job was worth. And it's a very
insignificant job. These little cards with his name on it
and "the compliments of" and an envelope with his name
printed on it. It was in two colors. So I said, "Jake,
this is $45." And he said, "Oh? Well, hmm. Okay."
183
So later on I was out in the shop-- No, I guess I had
been waiting for him. He was busy. I was looking around
the shop and I found a stack of three magazines. They were
French magazines on books called The Garden of Books,
something like that. I said, "Jake, look at these
magazines. These are really nice, but there's no price on
them. What are they going to cost me?" He said, "Let me
look at those. Oh, I think $45." [laughter]
ZEIGLER: So you just traded.
GERRY: It was the only thing in the bookstore that didn't
have a price on it, and I picked it. But then I said,
"Jake, what should I do with these? I think I'll rebind
these." "No, don't do that. Just make a slipcase for
them." So that's what I did. So he gave me $45 worth of
advice.
ZEIGLER: You've done several printing jobs for Jake. I
think there was a brochure on Paul Landacre, was it?
GERRY: Right, I also did a Piranesi catalog for him. That
was done when I was in Fallbrook, and Pall [W.] Bohne did
all the photography work. I remember these Piranesi
etchings were lying around-- Not lying around, but they
were in Pall's shop for months. And I kept asking the girl
that was doing the catalog for Jake, Carolyn Bullard,
"Don't you think we should get those out of there? Don't
you think you should get them back to the shop?" "No,
184
they're okay, they're okay." Well, it turns out they were,
but there were thousands of dollars ' worth of these prints
just stored in his office there. So anyway, there was no
problem. I worked with a local printer in Fallbrook, an
offset printer. I set the type, printed it, pasted it up,
and then they stripped in photographs of the prints. Then
they printed, trimmed, and shipped the whole catalog for
me. I think I did that on both the Landacre and the
Piranesi catalog. And Carol had the idea for the cover of
it. There was a Piranesi print that covered the whole
cover, and then I superimposed the title.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, I remember the cover was very nice.
GERRY: But all the typesetting, that I did. I suppose I
did a few other things. I never did a book for him.
Usually when somebody comes to me and asks for a book, I
don't have the equipment or the time. Something gets in
the way.
ZEIGLER: Could you say some about the role of different
institutions in the Los Angeles area and encouraging
printers and encouraging interest in fine books? Maybe the
Clark Library, the Huntington Library, Occidental College,
and any others you can think of.
GERRY: Well, certainly the Clark. I mean, they have a big
collection of material. Like even some of the job
envelopes from my press they've got. I mean, they're that
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detailed in their collection of Los Angeles printers, as
well as other printers. I think that [William Andrews]
Clark [Jr.] himself was interested in fine printing, having
had John Henry Nash do a lot of printing for him.
ZEIGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: So I think the tradition that he established has
carried on, and a lot of fine-print, bookish events take
place at the Clark. And they have a lecture series. As
far as the Huntington goes, I don't really know. The
Huntington to me is much more of a corporation.
ZEIGLER: How so?
GERRY: Well, maybe it's because I don't know so many
people there, but it seems like--
ZEIGLER: Is Ed [Edwin H.] Carpenter there?
GERRY: Ed's there, yeah. But I think he's retired. I
mean, he is retired, but he does some things on a retainer
basis of some kind. He also gives lectures for the
Huntington. He is also very big on the history of the
Huntingtons, and he gives talks on that for which he is
paid. Or the Huntington pays him to give the talks, I
don ' t know .
ZEIGLER: He's been very interested in your printing,
hasn't he?
GERRY: He has been more interested than anybody. I mean,
he came to my place one time and he wanted some ephemera.
186
So I said, "Here's this, here's that. Oh, look, there's
this whole drawer full of stuff here. Take this, take
that." And his eyes lighted up and he wanted to pay me for
it. I said, "Well, no, this is just ephemeral stuff I give
away." Well, he insisted on paying for it. So he's
interested in the littlest details about ephemera printing,
when it was done or who did it. And he has a tremendous
collection. In his house is a library.
ZEIGLER: Well, just because it's ephemera doesn't mean
that it's not good printing. Often it's some of the best
printing, don't you think?
GERRY: Oh, definitely. But I certainly didn't intend it
to be paid for. So he asked me a curious question the
other day. I'm starting another little press in the
backyard. I had fooled around trying to get this press
working. I printed up a sample of ornaments I had
designed, and Ed said to me the other day, "Was that the
first imprint of this particular Weather Bird Press?" And
I never thought of it. Yes, it was.
ZEIGLER: [laughter] Yeah, bibliophiles expend great
effort trying to find out that sort of thing. Printers
ought to record it for them.
GERRY: Yeah, they love to do that sleuthing. So yes, it
was.
ZEIGLER: Going back to the Clark--which, of course.
187
especially interests me — you've done some work for the
Clark. I know you did the owl, didn't you?
GERRY: Oh, yes, John Bidwell — I can't remember when he
started, but it was just around the time that Pat and I got
together in the early eighties — '80 or '81 — John contacted
me to do wood engraving for the Clark. It was sort of a
rush. No, it wasn't a rush. I just didn't feel I had
time. But, nevertheless, I did two of them that were the
owl, but kind of untraditional sort of. In one the owl was
being squashed by books .
ZEIGLER: Yeah. [laughter]
GERRY: Then I can't remember what the other one was, but
it said Clark Library on it. So they accepted the wood
engravings. He wanted something a little more light-
hearted and less nineteenth century than the design they
have. But this is not to replace; it's just to supplement
it. So they used it on lighter things.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, I know we use it on our pads of paper.
GERRY: Oh, really?
ZEIGLER: It looks cute with books falling on the owl. Has
John Bidwell encouraged you to do a lot of other work? I
think you mentioned that he talked you into doing the map
for the Bibliophiles Association ["A Bibliophile's Map of
Los Angeles" ] .
GERRY: Yeah, John's the guy who promotes. He usually has
188
some things printed by Patrick. I mean, his own personal
Christmas cards he has printed by Pat Reagh. John
encourages printers. John I don't think is much interested
in printing himself. I don't mean to say that he has to
have his own printshop in his backyard or anything like
that. He's got too many business-- Or not business, but--
He's the editor of some nineteenth-century works on
printing that are done by the Garland Press. He has plenty
and plenty, more than enough bibliography work without
trying to print it also. So that's really his field. But
he does like fine printing. He promoted some printing that
Patrick and I did for the Clark. Patrick still prints for
the Clark, largely due to John's influence I think. His
high recommendation.
ZEIGLER: Yeah. Well, librarians have taken quite a bit of
interest in printing and encouraged it. What about
Lawrence Clark Powell? He was really a friend and promoter
of Los Angeles printers.
GERRY: Oh, yeah. And he's still-- I did a job for him not
too long ago.
ZEIGLER: What was that?
GERRY: It was something for the Zamorano [Club] and
Roxburghe [Club] meeting last year called Trans-Pacific.
It was out of his diary about flying across the Pacific in
1966, a booklet that Patrick and I printed for him. And
189
he's after me to do a book of a chapter from The Blue
Train, which was a novel he wrote as a young man in
Dijon. And I told him to be cautious. I have so many
other things to do before I can get to it. He was one of
the founders of the Rounce and Coffin Club, one of the
supporters and the voice of printers. You know, he is
constantly writing. I mean, he has written so many things
that have indirectly to do with printers and printing.
ZEIGLER: I sort of have the impression that he's another
reason why Pasadena has been a center of printing. Because
he grew up in Pasadena, didn't he? And encouraged printers
there .
GERRY: Well, I think he left Pasadena in his twenties. I
don't think he came back to Pasadena-- Well, maybe he lived
there. But I don't know that he encouraged any Pasadena
printers, except for Ward. Yeah, Ward was a Pasadena
printer for a while, in his backyard. Then he moved over
to Los Angeles. I think he lived in Pasadena, though, or
at least part of his life.
ZEIGLER: What about Occidental College? Have some people
at Occidental College played a role in encouraging
printers?
GERRY: Tyrus Harmsen has always been a member of the
Rounce and Coffin Club, and he wrote the first book about- -
The Plantin Press of Saul and Lillian Marks. I can't
190
remember who printed it. Grant, or maybe Saul printed it,
I can't remember. And he's written about the Castle Press,
and he now has the Book Arts Print Shop at Occidental,
which comes from Andy [Andrew] Horn's equipment and some
type he bought from Lillian Marks when she sold out her
shop. I haven't seen any of the students' work, but I
understand it's pretty good. A smaller-scale shop, I
think, than you have here.
ZEIGLER: Have you done any printing for him?
GERRY: No, Ty started his own press, the Tiger Press, not
too long ago, not too many years ago. And he does most of
his own printing. As far as Occidental printing goes, I
think Grant used to do some and Ward did some. I think
that's all done by more commercial printers now.
ZEIGLER: Well, moving into the area of bookmen's clubs, we
talked a lot about the Rounce and Coffin Club. What about
the Zamorano Club? Are you involved in that?
GERRY: I'm not a member and I really don't know much about
it, except that it was the first Los Angeles book club, I
understand.
ZEIGLER: Are there other bookmen's clubs in the area?
GERRY: Yeah, but I'll probably give you the wrong names.
I think there is a Book Collectors Society, and maybe one
other. And there is the Abracadabra. That's the name of
their publication. I don't know what the official name of
191
their group is [Alliance for Contemporary Book Arts], but
Pat ' s a member of that and Susan King and I think Bonnie
Thompson Norman. Sorry, these names don't come to me.
Gloria-- The movie actress. [Gloria Stewart] She has a
printshop. And I think Joe [Joseph] D'Ambrosio is also in
that group. I've been invited, but somehow I just never
get around to joining. One club is all I can handle.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, especially when you get called upon to be a
judge for the book contest every once in a while. It must
take up a fair amount of time.
GERRY: Or when somebody wants something printed for the
club.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, I guess that really keeps its members busy,
printing all those keepsakes and announcements and
things. Do they still print keepsakes, the Rounce and
Coffin Club?
GERRY: Yes, a few keepsakes come out, but not as many as
there were at one time. Most of the printing that is
involved is for the Western Books Exhibition. The chairman
has to wheedle these printers into doing this every year:
the case cards, the case, the poster, the catalog, the call
for books, and two or three other items. She- -she being
Elva Marshall, or whoever it might be; Elva has been the
chairman for two or three years now- -has to twist
everybody's arm to get them to do these things. Oh, the
192
award certificates too.
ZEIGLER: Have you done a lot of that printing for the
Western Books Exhibition?
GERRY: Yeah. Oh, I wouldn't say a lot. I try to do my
share, I guess I should say that.
ZEIGLER: Let's see, maybe we could talk a little bit more
about the economics of presses such as yours. Do you think
that small presses and presses that try to do fine printing
have a particular niche in the publishing world? I'm not
sure if I phrased that question exactly right.
GERRY: They certainly have a niche, you know, to publish
things that might not otherwise be published. It usually
always comes down to poetry. There are other things.
That's their niche. And also to keep good taste in
printing alive. And also innovation. But economically I
don't think it's-- I would say ideally it would be more
like Saul or Ward or Grant sets the example. The press
functions as a commercial press, so it can sustain itself
financially. The owner is a book-oriented printer, and he
can run a book through his shop using his employees and do
it economically because he can offset the costs against his
other printing that he does. He has the trained employees
to do the work, and they can do it in a fairly fast way, as
opposed to doing a book and having to hire the person or
people or the trade work to be done individually. In other
193
words-- I guess I don't know what I'm trying to say. But
it seems to me that Grant and Ward had the ideal situation
where they could- -
ZEIGLER: Yeah, they could oversee the whole process.
GERRY: They can oversee the whole process, but
f inancially--if you want to talk about economics --they can
run things through their shop more economically than some
small little printer like myself, or say even Pat Reagh.
Because they had a shop that was working eight hours every
day. They could run it through in slow times when they
might have had to pay the employees anyway.
But I don't think anybody, any private press, is going
to get rich. You can see the prices of some of the books
and you think, "Gee, maybe they are going to get rich."
But I doubt it. I think that the more higher-priced books
are just more reasonably charged than the ones, say, that
are practically given away. You give away your labor. You
don ' t charge nearly as much as they should cost because you
can't believe a book that small would cost so much.
ZEIGLER: I guess the costs really mount up with buying all
the paper and supplies and the amount of work you put into
it.
GERRY: The smaller shop like mine or I would say like Joe
D'Ambrosio or Eric Voss-- People that work on that scale
generally do almost all the labor themselves, and that's
194
free--practically — because they're all giving it away. I
don't want to say Joe's giving it away. You're practically
giving it away. You have to do it because you love to do
it. You're not ever going to make any money at it.
Now, then there are exceptions. On the outer margins
there are people like Andrew Hoyem [of Arion Press] who
apparently do pretty well. I mean, he's able to afford to
keep going. He was able to buy out Mackensie and Harris,
Typesetters, that were threatening to go under. That's at
one end. But there aren't very many people like that.
Also, I think selling and promoting is like anything,
whether it ' s for Simon and Schuster or the Weather Bird
Press. It's the same thing; you've got to sell it. And I
think that Hoyem does a very good job at that. He's not
only a great printer, he's a darned good salesman. Those
are the more successful, to have those two abilities in one
person.
ZEIGLER: And of course selling costs you money in itself,
just printing the prospectuses and distributing them and
sending them out and so on.
GERRY: And the public appearances. Is that what you meant
by economics?
ZEIGLER: Yes. Could you say how you go about promoting
your books?
GERRY: I try to send out a catalog and — I'm very poor at
195
this, at keeping a good list of people who have bought from
me before: book dealers, libraries. I don't do a very good
job of it. I like to just send out a catalog. I used to
send out Weather Bird to people who have bought from me
during the year and I would sent out maybe postcards.
Personal calls, very few. It's because I don't like to do
it that I don't do it. Personal calls do more for selling
a book than anything else, but I just never do it. And if
you could carry a bundle of your books into a book dealer
who might be sympathetic, chances are you will sell one.
But then, who is interested in selling? It isn't that much
fun. [laughter]
ZEIGLER: The fun is in the making.
GERRY: Yeah. But to be successful, you've got to do
both. I should do more. I often thought I would go once a
year up and down the coast of California and hit all the
bookshops that might be interested. Make a real trip out
of it, a real selling tour. But I never do it. Because
that could be fun also, you know. But I never get around
to doing it.
ZEIGLER: For instance, if it were me doing it, I would
probably come home more broke than when I started because
I'd buy things in each of those bookshops.
GERRY: That's the danger of being a collector and a
printer. I seldom go to Dawson's, to sell them a book.
196
that I don't buy one which is usually more expensive.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, well, that has its dangers. Being a book
lover is an expensive proposition.
GERRY: Right. That's why I guess I have always had to
work in some other field to pay for it.
ZEIGLER: Yeah. Who would you say your customers are? I
mean, what groups of people are customers?
GERRY: Libraries. I used to have a list I'd send out of
who were pretty good buyers. Libraries change back and
forth from one policy to another. Year to year they
change. You try to find a library that's assembling a
collection of private printing and then that does pretty
well for you. So naturally the local libraries, like the
Clark-- I don't know about Occidental, but the Clark for
sure collects some things, my things- -my printing. And
there may be somebody else. Like I say, I can't
remember. I'm very poor at doing this. An organized
system of selling I don't have.
So then there would be some private customers who say,
you know, "Send me anything you print." A standing
order. But the trouble with a standing order is I never
remember. Again, I don't have an organized system for
standing orders. Then, on the other hand, you send sombody
something on a standing order and they say, "Gee, why did
you send me this? I don't want this!" So I just sort of
197
forget about standing orders and let the book collector
work it out for himself.
Then I think book dealers buy from me. Lorson's
[Books and Prints]-- There are a few of them around, but it
would generally be Dawson's and Lorson's. Sometimes up in
Sacramento Barry Cassidy buys from me. And again, it's a
matter of getting out there and finding people like Barry
Cassidy who are interested in them. Then there is the
Califia Bookstore. She sometimes will sell books of mine,
but she is interested in more artier books generally than I
do.
ZEIGLER: Where's that?
GERRY: Edwina Leggett in San Francisco.
I would say infrequently I ' 11 get a call from out of
nowhere. Somebody called me from New York about the
[Edward] Ardizzone book. I have no idea how they even
found out about it. It was a library. No, I think it was
a book dealer. You wonder, how did they ever hear about
it?
ZEIGLER: Well —
GERRY: Then there are some private collectors. John Class
collects some of my things.
ZEIGLER: Very likely one of those private collectors
showed his collection to another book lover and said, "Hey,
I like this" and sent an order to you.
198
GERRY: Could be.
ZEIGLER: Do you think that the small fine printers have
had any influence on the style of the large conunercial
printing houses?
GERRY: I think they probably did at one time. I'm not so
sure now. I think there is a much larger separation
between a modern and up-to-date technical print job and the
small fine printer than there was in the past. Mainly
because, I guess, they are using two different
technologies. Whereas before, their technologies were the
same. So people that have become printers now are less
book oriented than they might have been in the past, or at
least during the revival period, which was from the time of
William Morris until now, or a few years ago. Nowadays a
person tends to want to be a printer to print color
pictures and be successful like any other business. I
don't think that's any great revelation; it's probably
always been that way. But I don't see printers nowadays
who are anything other than commercial, color printers. At
least out here.
ZEIGLER: How do you go about determining what to charge
for a book? What do you take into consideration?
GERRY: Ideally, you keep a chart of your costs and your
labor, and you keep time. Ideally, I'm speaking. You have
an hourly rate which you charge, and you add up all your
199
expenses and you take your hourly rate . And when you ' re
all done with the book and you say, "This is what it costs
to make it, " then you double the price and add the markup
on. That's the way I understand business is supposed to
work. But when the fine printer who has printed up this
little book adds up his costs and the book comes out to be
$95 apiece and it looks like it's worth fifty cents, you
have got to make some kind of compromise or else be very
hardheaded about it. And when you double the price, then
that's almost $200. You add the 40 percent on, and it's
just unbelievable. I think the small printer makes a
compromise.
Largely what I do, many times, is ask Dawson--Glen or
Muir [Dawson] --or Jim Lorson even, "What do you think we
could sell this book for?" It isn't a matter of what it
costs; it's what do you think the market will bear for this
kind of a book that's this thick and has this many pages.
And usually they're pretty generous about it, much more so
than I would be. That would be how I would determine it;
that's how I personally determine the price. It's not a
very businesslike way. I do the book the way I want to do
it. I have a general idea what it cost and get somebody's
idea of what it will sell for. And I'm not in a rush to
sell the books, my books. I'm not in a rush to recover my
costs, and that's to my advantage, because then I can keep
200
my book list a fatter list than only just having one book
on it. I like to be able to put out a catalog now and then
that has six, seven, ten items in it. So it's far more
just playing the game of publisher than actually being one.
ZEIGLER: What future do you think there is for letterpress
printing with the technology being so different now? Do
you think there will be people still continuing to do it?
GERRY: I think it's going to be much more handwork, and
then the few people who have Linotypes or Monotypes will
have to give them up because nobody will know how to
operate them. The next generation will not know how to
operate them, and the machinery will-- Even though there
are lots of parts and people with the skills to repair
these machines around, there won't be for too long. And
the matrices will wear out. Even though there are large
stocks of matrices held by major dealers around, when
nobody wants them anymore, they'll be junked, turned back
into brass stock. So if it does survive, it will be by
hand setting, and you still have to have some typefounders
around.
Now, there's quite a group of typefounders that has
developed over that last twenty years. In this country it
is the American Typefounders Fellowship. A man named
Richard Hopkins and a man named Paul [H.] Duensing.
Duensing is probably the foremost amateur typefounder in
201
the world.
ZEIGLER: And he designed several faces, didn't he?
GERRY: Yes. So I don't know quite how it will work.
That's the one thing. I think the typesettiiig machines
will be gone and it will have to be done by hand, which is
okay. But most of the printers you see in the San
Francisco area have their type set by a typesetting house,
Mackensie and Harris. They don't set their type
themselves. So what are they going to do when Mackensie
and Harris, now saved at the last minute by Andrew Hoyem
from bankruptcy--? What's going to happen when they go out
of business? Well, you can't really set large books by
hand now, even though I know Andrew Hoyem does some. But
it's pretty economically crazy.
My other scenario for what will happen is that peopltt
will more and more go to offset lithography and do more
hand lettering, use the phototype more and do more like-- 1
want to say hand-drawn books--that is what I woviUi Mko to
see. Or phototypeset books that are decorated by hand.
Maybe a little more direct lithography, where they draw
directly on the plates, instead of photo lithography.
And as far as binding goes, I see it jvist going along
right like this. They may come up soon with some new and
less expensive way to bind a book, but I think there will
still always be people who like to sell and do craftwork
202
the world.
ZEIGLER: And he designed several faces, didn't he?
GERRY: Yes. So I don't know quite how it will work.
That's the one thing. I think the typesetting machines
will be gone and it will have to be done by hand, which is
okay. But most of the printers you see in the San
Francisco area have their type set by a typesetting house,
Mackensie and Harris. They don't set their type
themselves. So what are they going to do when Mackensie
and Harris, now saved at the last minute by Andrew Hoyem
from bankruptcy--? What's going to happen when they go out
of business? Well, you can't really set large books by
hand now, even though I know Andrew Hoyem does some. But
it's pretty economically crazy.
My other scenario for what will happen is that people
will more and more go to offset lithography and do more
hand lettering, use the phototype more and do more like-- I
want to say hand-drawn books- -that is what I would like to
see. Or phototypeset books that are decorated by hand.
Maybe a little more direct lithography, where they draw
directly on the plates, instead of photo lithography.
And as far as binding goes, I see it just going along
right like this. They may come up soon with some new and
less expensive way to bind a book, but I think there will
still always be people who like to sell and do craftwork
202
with books that will be binding.
ZEIGLER: Yeah, and it's very satisfying to make it
yourself that way.
GERRY: Yeah. And I think printers like to do — some
printers--their own binding. I know I did.
ZEIGLER: You mentioned that there would be maybe more
hand-drawn, hand- lettered, and photo-offset books. Do you
think there is a revival of interesting calligraphy?
GERRY: Oh, I think there has been. That would be nice to
have. Where did I see a very handsomely hand- lettered book
recently? It might have been done by Warren Chappell, and
it was beautiful. There is that. There is calligraphy,
almost like a manuscript, that could be done. I see that
as a possibility for doing it for lithography. And then
also, like I said before, I'm waiting for this innovative
person. This new Bruce Rogers who is going to come along
and exploit the technology in some way that we haven't
thought of that will really be an eye-opener, like [William
A.] Dwiggins and Rogers did in the early part of the
century. And most trade books are really awful looking
nowadays. Somebody, somewhere should be coming along to
make them look good.
ZEIGLER: Get the idea that they don't have to look awful.
GERRY: It's the same old argument that has been going on,
off and on. I think once you get letterpress way under the
203
boards and beyond it and the remnants of what's left of
metal type and the printing machinery has disappeared,
because nobody will know what it is after a while, then I
think we will be free to adopt the going technology,
whatever it may be. There is always some new thing coming
along. But offset lithography I think is the one. I mean,
you can buy an offset press as cheap as you can buy a
letterpress, an old, used letterpress. I'm sure you can
buy an old, used offset press cheap. I've almost talked
myself into it.
ZEIGLER: Hermann Zapf has been working on designing good
typefaces for computer printouts, hasn't he? So I guess
that's one direction that you could go. Computer printing
still looks pretty bad, but it doesn't have to. You can
have a well-printed--
GERRY: Right, it doesn't have to. They have some nice,
very nice, excellent photo types.
ZEIGLER: I was sort of interested in this idea of hand-
drawing and then reproducing it, because I've been writing
a paper myself on the lettering that Eric Gill did for the
Cranach Press and Weimar and also for Insel-Verlag in
Germany. And there, I think, the best technology they
could do back then was that Eric Gill drew these letters
and then they cut them into wood, and so they were really
wood-engraved letters. Anyway, let's see, where do we want
204
to go from here? I had a few odds and ends of questions
that sort of didn't get asked in the appropriate place.
GERRY: Oh, sure.
ZEIGLER: Who has worked with you in your printing
activities? Have you had some other person or persons
helping you?
GERRY: My wife [Mary Palmer Gerry] used to sew sometimes,
sew booklets, but she is not really very interested in
it. Other than that I haven't really had anybody.
205
TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
MAY 18, 1989
ZIEGLER: I saw in some of your job sheets that it said
"Mary's binding time." Is that your wife [Mary Palmer
Gerry]?
GERRY: Oh, yeah, right. I guess that was an attempt at
watching my expenses, to keep a cost accounting. I think I
later on gave that up.
ZIEGLER: Also, I wanted to ask you where you learned to do
binding.
GERRY: I think I learned a lot from Pall [W.] Bohne. And,
like I say, the original man at the [Walt] Disney Studio,
named Lou Appet, who later became the business agent for
Local 839, taught me. Also, Nevins had an amateur
bookbinders shop on Seventh Street until sometime in the
seventies. He was very helpful to us all. I had printed a
little book, and Appet showed me how to sew it and how to
make the covers and how to glue it together. From then on
I just kept trying to do it-- I would sometimes do ten
copies on the dining room table. Then I think I met Pall,
and Pall showed me some things I was doing wrong--or maybe
I read some books--and I got some ideas from Pall, who was
a very excellent craftsman. Then I got a sewing machine
and a standing press and I was able to bind editions of a
hundred or so without going crazy. I mean, it was boring
206
TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
MAY 18, 1989
ZIEGLER: I saw in some of your job sheets that it said
"Mary's binding time." Is that your wife [Mary Palmer
Gerry] ?
GERRY: Oh, yeah, right. I guess that was an attempt at
watching my expenses, to keep a cost accounting. I think I
later on gave that up.
ZIEGLER: Also, I wanted to ask you where you learned to do
binding.
GERRY: I think I learned a lot from Pall [W.] Bohne. And,
like I say, the original man at the [Walt] Disney Studio,
named Lou Appet, who later became the business agent for
Local 839, taught me. Also, Nevins had an amateur
bookbinders shop on Seventh Street until sometime in the
seventies. He was very helpful to us all. I had printed a
little book, and Appet showed me how to sew it and how to
make the covers and how to glue it together. From then on
I just kept trying to do it-- I would sometimes do ten
copies on the dining room table. Then I think I met Pall,
and Pall showed me some things I was doing wrong--or maybe
I read some books--and I got some ideas from Pall, who was
a very excellent craftsman. Then I got a sewing machine
and a standing press and I was able to bind editions of a
hundred or so without going crazy. I mean, it was boring
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enough, but the sewing machine made a really big
difference, because you could sew through the spine of the
signatures with this machine. I don't want to say quite
rapidly, but certainly faster than you could do it by hand.
ZIEGLER: Excuse my ignorance. This is a special sewing
machine for bookbinding?
GERRY: Yes, it's called a Smythe sewing machine.
ZIEGLER: You can't do it on a regular sewing machine?
GERRY: No, it has a whole row of needles and loopers in it
that push the needle through the spine of the signature and
the loopers pick it up and the hook needles pull it through
back out and it keeps going. You just sew all the books
together in one long row and then later on cut them apart
into individual books. Then a standing press had all the
boards with ridges on it that you put in the grooves of the
spine. You know what I mean? The long way, where the
spine separates from the cover boards. These edged
boards. You lay the books- -like, say, four books- -with
their spines on these brass edges that are raised like a
sixteenth of an inch. Then on top of that you put another
edged board, and then you lay four books on top of that.
You put another edged board on top of that. You are doing
this one at a time, though. I mean, you can only glue one
book at a time. You can't glue four. You put the books
together one at a time.
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ZIEGLER: So the other four books are just for weight to
hold it down?
GERRY: No, you put them down after you have four boards
laid out — four books laid out on these edged boards. Then
you put another edged board on top of that. Now, the
grooves and the spine are being taken care of by the top
board and the bottom board, and you keep stacking these up
on the standing press. In a commercial shop, where you've
got two or three people working on a binding- -gluing and
casing in, you know--they can fill one of these presses in
half a day. Well, I had my press cut down because it was
too tall. I couldn't fill it! [laughter] In a day's work
I could do fifty, twenty- five books. Now, you put the
squeeze to these books that are in between the boards.
They're in the standing press, and you squeeze the boards
down as hard as you can. And then you have this lever that
you stick into the screw of the press. It gives you so
much leverage that with hardly any effort at all, you can
squeeze the glue right through the paper. So you have to
be a little careful there, because I've done that before.
You leave the books in this press--that ' s why it's called a
standing press. The books stand there for twenty-four
hours or however long you want them to. They dry in
there . And when you take them out , they ' re squeezed so
nice and tightly together that they don't warp like they
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would if you just tossed them on a table. Anyway, it's a
finished book that comes out of there. So that's when I
was doing-- I got to that point where I was doing generally
pretty much edition binding. Whenever I could afford it, I
would usually have somebody else do it. I would have
another binder do it, a commercial binder.
ZIEGLER: Where do you buy this binding equipment?
GERRY: This equipment? I got the sewing machine and the
standing press from the Self -Realization Fellowship. They
had expanded their press that was on Mount Washington--then
in Highland Park- -so much that they were doing so many
volumes that they could no longer-- They were producing so
much work that they could no longer do it themselves . They
had to send the binding out. The equipment I bought from
them was not enough for them, but it was enough for me.
That's how I bought that. There's a company called Gayne
Brothers and Lane who specialize in selling binding
machinery and binding supplies here in Los Angeles.
ZIEGLER: Well, could we move on now and talk about some of
your activities as an artist? Do you remember being
interested in art as a child and how you first started
thinking you wanted to be an artist?
GERRY: I think it was probably the only thing I ever did
in class that the teacher liked. I was sort of a poor
student. My grandmother [Lula Baxter White] had done a
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would if you just tossed them on a table. Anyway, it's a
finished book that comes out of there. So that's when I
was doing — I got to that point where I was doing generally
pretty much edition binding. Whenever I could afford it, I
would usually have somebody else do it. I would have
another binder do it, a commercial binder.
ZIEGLER: Where do you buy this binding equipment?
GERRY: This equipment? I got the sewing machine and the
standing press from the Self -Realization Fellowship. They
had expanded their press that was on Mount Washington--then
in Highland Park--so much that they were doing so many
volumes that they could no longer-- They were producing so
much work that they could no longer do it themselves. They
had to send the binding out. The equipment I bought from
them was not enough for them, but it was enough for me.
That's how I bought that. There's a company called Gayne
Brothers and Lane who specialize in selling binding
machinery and binding supplies here in Los Angeles.
ZIEGLER: Well, could we move on now and talk about some of
your activities as an artist? Do you remember being
interested in art as a child and how you first started
thinking you wanted to be an artist?
GERRY: I think it was probably the only thing I ever did
in class that the teacher liked. I was sort of a poor
student. My grandmother [Lula Baxter White] had done a
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little oil painting and she encouraged me, although she
said, "You should never be an artist because artists are
always poor." She wanted me to be successful. Yes, I
think so. I think when I got out of high school I was
unqualified for any college. So the registrar said, "What
are you going to do?" I said, "I don't know." I guess I
was about eighteen. She said, "What are you interested
in?" I said, "Art." She said, "Here's this school over
here in L.A. You can go to them and you could study art
there if you want to be a commercial artist." So I went to
Woodbury [College]. I think we've gone through this
before. Then after Woodbury I went to Art Center
[School] . And then after I was in the army I went to
Chouinard [Art Institute] and ended up at Disney. Been
there ever since, off and on, for more than thirty years.
ZEIGLER: I wonder if you could comment on the different
art media that you work in. I've seen samples of your pen
and ink and your watercolors and pochoir and linoleum cuts
and woodcuts--are there any that I've left out?
GERRY: No, I think that's them. I think I feel more
comfortable with a linoleum cut than a wood engraving.
This book that I am going to do. Seashore Plants of
Southern California--tentative title--I'm going to do in
linoleum cuts. Pen and ink drawing, I guess it would be
sort of in the style of [Edward] Ardizzone. I've probably
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been influenced by him, cross-hatching and so on. The
pochoir just kind of grew. I think after I had seen the
book Elsie and the Child that was published by Cassell and
Company [Ltd.] in England and was stenciled and finally
printed by the Curwen Press, I think that's when I thought
I should try that on one of my books.
ZIEGLER: And you've gotten some great results with it in
the M. F. K. Fisher, The Standing and the Waiting, for
instance.
GERRY: Yeah, that was the one I ultimately did. It didn't
turn out like I wanted it to, but it didn't turn out too
bad. I mean, it's acceptable. I guess what I dreamed in
my mind was something quite a bit different than what I
turned out. Let's see, and I do watercolors. I try to do
watercolors. Oil painting I don't do. Sometimes I use
pastels in studio work, but most often in my studio work I
use a china marker and watercolors. That's very quick.
ZIEGLER: What's a china marker?
GERRY: It's so you can mark the price on a piece of
china. It's a grease pencil, very greasy. But it's very
clean. It's much cleaner than a charcoal pencil. And when
you paint watercolor over it, it resists the watercolor,
and it won't run or smudge like charcoal.
ZIEGLER: I wanted to ask you, pochoir is very painstaking
in the sense that you have to do each one individually.
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isn't it? And for illustrating a book it's the same thing
as etching: each copy has to be done separately.
GERRY: It's like binding; it's very monotonous.
ZIEGLER: Also, probably no two copies are exactly
identical because you ' re not going to be brushing exactly
the same amount of paint on the stencil in each one.
GERRY: Right, and as you go, the more bored you get, the
more innovative you get on how you can treat this simple
stencil. You know, you might want to soften one edge or
stipple it with a brush or paint it a different direction
or put a texture into it. These things come to you as
you're doing it.
ZIEGLER: Could you describe the process for the tape?
GERRY: I'll describe the way I do it. You work out of
your drawing with the idea that it's going to be in how
many colors. The more colors, the more work for you; the
more colors, the more your reader is going to like it. And
you can trick things by transparencies. You can set three
colors out of two. So you can let that play in your mind.
ZIEGLER: By transparencies, in this case, you mean
brushing a wash of one color across what you've already put
down.
GERRY: Right. This is going to be a transparent
watercolor, or a semi-transparent anyway. Enough so you
can't do it with opaque watercolors. But watercolor seems
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to be the best thing. Then over this drawing that you
figure out in your mind, or you might have outlined it on
the drawing in different color pencils, you take a piece of
celluloid-- No, not celluloid. Mylar. Celluloid probably
doesn't exist anymore. It's about three thousandths to
five thousandths of an inch thick. You can cut it with a
knife, but it's very hard with an X-acto or a frisket knife
or something like that. I use what they call a stencil
burner. It's like the little woodburning set you had when
you were a kid, and it burns right through the plastic. As
in needlepoint, you can just follow your drawing, which is
under the plastic, and cut the outline. And because it's a
stencil there are all sorts of qualifications, as you can
imagine, that come with a stencil. You can't have things
existing in midair. It's got to be tied to something to
keep the stencil. The more complicated the stencil, the
harder it is to brush. All right, so you've cut your
color. And now you make some sort of a guide so that the
stencil will always be in the same place every time on
every sheet of paper, and that's easier than it sounds.
The most difficult thing is to get the right consistency of
color. If it's too wet, it's going to run underneath the
stencil, and if it's too dry it takes forever to brush it
on. But I would much prefer it to be on the drier side.
ZIEGLER: Which gives it sort of a powdery, grainy look.
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to be the best thing. Then over this drawing that you
figure out in your mind, or you might have outlined it on
the drawing in different color pencils, you take a piece of
celluloid-- No, not celluloid. Mylar. Celluloid probably
doesn't exist anymore. It's about three thousandths to
five thousandths of an inch thick. You can cut it with a
knife, but it's very hard with an X-acto or a frisket knife
or something like that. I use what they call a stencil
burner. It's like the little woodburning set you had when
you were a kid, and it burns right through the plastic. As
in needlepoint, you can just follow your drawing, which is
under the plastic, and cut the outline. And because it's a
stencil there are all sorts of qualifications, as you can
imagine, that come with a stencil. You can't have things
existing in midair. It's got to be tied to something to
keep the stencil. The more complicated the stencil, the
harder it is to brush. All right, so you've cut your
color. And now you make some sort of a guide so that the
stencil will always be in the same place every time on
every sheet of paper, and that's easier than it sounds.
The most difficult thing is to get the right consistency of
color. If it's too wet, it's going to run underneath the
stencil, and if it's too dry it takes forever to brush it
on. But I would much prefer it to be on the drier side.
ZIEGLER: Which gives it sort of a powdery, grainy look.
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which is often very nice for the effect you want in the
picture.
GERRY: Yeah. So then you start doing your addition. You
just do it sheet by sheet. A lot of times things will
occur to you that didn't occur to you until you actually
start stenciling it. Then [when] the sheets dry, you cut
the second color and you repeat the process with a stencil
brush on a plate. You work the paint out and keep the
brush dry. You might keep two brushes so if one is too
wet, you can rub the brushes together. That's what I do.
Then you use the drier of the two. And you run through
your addition that way. Now, this can be done over an
existing printed drawing or like in the case of the M. F.
K. Fisher book I did, there was no printed key drawing. I
just did it all with stencils, which is fine.
ZIEGLER: : How did you first discover pochoir?
GERRY: Oh, probably in some example books where Curwen
Press examples were shown. And, like I say, I got this
copy of Elsie and the Child by Arnold Bennett and I could
see-- I mean, I could see that it was a beautiful thing,
but I also could see that it was a thing you could do
yourself. I mean, after all, I had some kind of artistic
ability and I had been trained as a kind of an artist, so
it was a possibility. And here it was combined with
print. So naturally it would appeal to me. Then I think I
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saw some French examples. Then there were a couple of
shows out here, which I didn't get to, but I got their
catalogs and it talked about pochoir. And then I looked up
some things Curwen had written about stenciling at the
Curwen. He wrote an article somewhere called "Stenciling
at the Curwen Press." Then I tried to do it, and
unsuccessfully quite a bit of the time. Usually the brush
was too wet or the design wasn't worked out very well. By
the time I got to Mrs. Fisher's book, I had done a couple
of things not too well. But I started out on her book and
just kept going. I really learned most of everything I
know about it from her book. If I do one for a Lawrence
Clark Powell, for his The Blue Train, he wants me to do
stencil illustrations, so I would do that again, probably
simpler with the printed key. Not that a printed key is at
all necessary. I did some stenciling designs and cut the
stencils for John Handle's Matrix magazine.
ZIEGLER: Oh, yeah. I saw an article on that.
GERRY: He wanted to do this and have a little article on
stenciling and also some examples. I said he was crazy,
because he wanted to do nine hundred copies . Probably a
thousand.
ZIEGLER: I think he talks in there about what a time-
consuming process it was to stencil each copy.
GERRY: Oh, right. I said, "I'm not sure you really want
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to do this." Well, he wrote back from England that he had
assembled this group of people that were all ready to go in
this. I said, "Well, okay." So I wrote a little article
and I illustrated it with the stencils. These all had
key-- There were keys that would be printed, that he would
print. And then his slaves, as he called them, would
stencil over these. I tried to work them out in two
colors, and one was three colors. He called me one time
from England and he said, "The stencils keep breaking, they
keep breaking." I said, "Well, you have to stick them back
together with Scotch tape. They are stenciling too hard or
rubbing too hard." So I cut him some more stencils on a
thicker Mylar. I didn't have to do it, but I could tell
that they were killing themselves. [laughter] So I think
that will be one of the most prized of all the matrix
magazines for the sheer labor that went into the
stenciling. It's a very nice medium.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, it does achieve beautiful results.
GERRY: And it gets much cleaner and nicer colors than if
they're printed. The thing is to do, say, twenty- five
copies or something.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, a real limited edition. Do linoleum cuts
and woodcuts, then, just go right into the press along with
the type? Or do they have to be printed separately?
GERRY: Yes, that's the great advantage. However, in most
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cases--even if you're printing in black--unless it's a very
light-complexioned cut, you're going to have to print it
separately, because the type is going to take less ink than
the cut. Now, if you're doing a handpress, you can kind of
get around this by having two different rollers, one with
more ink for the cut--if you can get it in there without
hitting the type--and one with a little less ink for the
type. But if you ink the cut so it will print the type,
you will have too much ink on it.
ZIEGLER: It will be clogged in there. Yeah, I've once or
twice tried doing linoleum cuts, and I had a problem
getting a solid block of black on the black spaces, because
I wasn't inking enough. I can see it would take a lot of
ink.
GERRY: So generally you have to do it separately. The
illustrations are printed separately. This is really a
different medium. I mean, in commercial printing in the
past they were done at the same time.
ZIEGLER: I understood that what was partly responsible for
the wonderful efflorescence of woodcuts in Renaissance
Germany was that they could go together into the press with
newly discovered type printing and print at the same time.
GERRY: Well, even in [Thomas] Bewick's time they printed
the things together. I think that's one reason why Bewick
complained that they lost so much, because they were kind
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of sloppy printers. But those German woodcuts, the ones I
think you're talking about, were fairly light. They were
not a lot of solids. They were mostly a lot of line
work. Yeah, line work instead and lots of open spaces
rather than solid black.
ZIEGLER: Have you done art in other contexts besides your
books that you've printed and your work at Disney? Have
you displayed as an artist at galleries?
GERRY: No, not really. I'm still working up a painting
that I can take to a gallery. I had shows done with some
of the other fellows at the studio. You would have a
little watercolor show in the library or something, but
never professionally.
ZIEGLER: Where have some of those shows been?
GERRY: At the Disney Studio in one of the large rooms like
this room, a meeting room. We might have put some up in
there, just unofficial stuff. I did have some for sale at
Jim [James E.] Lorson's for a while, but I only sold one.
I took the others back, and Jim has not been pounding on my
door to get me to send more.
ZIEGLER: So your favorite art medium is watercolor when
you're not doing something to include in a book, when it's
just a single copy.
GERRY: I was very much influenced as a young guy-- And
then later on when I went to the studio, I worked with
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these California watercolorists. Most of the background
painters who worked in the studios in those days were the
California watercolorists.
ZIEGLER: Who were some of them?
GERRY: Well, there was Art Riley, there was Ralph Hulett,
Claude Coats, Preston Blair, Herb Ryman, Ken Anderson. So
not only had I seen these when I was a kid, the great
California watercolor style, but — Emil Kosa and Rex
Brandt-- Oh, another one at Disney, although I didn't know
him, was-- Darn it! I can't remember these people's
names. Phil Dike. A great California watercolorist. So I
think that not only did I love them before, but when I got
to know some of the guys I loved them even more. Although,
at the time I knew them, I wasn't doing any watercolor.
It's only like in the last ten or fifteen years I have
thought about seriously trying to do something.
ZIEGLER: Could you tell me a little bit more about the
school of California watercolorists? I don't know much
about them.
GERRY: Well, it ' s a style of painting that sort of
developed around Los Angeles, where things were very
direct. You might even say tricky. The techniques were
very sophisticated in that they were very direct, in that
nobody niggled around with little brushstrokes. They were
all big brushstrokes, and they were all done with one or
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two washes--very seldom three--and the colors were
bright. The subject matter was local. Millard Sheets,
there's the one that was the kingpin of the California
style. He started it really. I don't want to say he
started it, but he was very influential in its beginnings
in the twenties and all the way up until-- Well, he's still
alive. He's still influential. He's still doing
watercolors. And then there were a number of people in the
San Francisco area. So that's what I call the California
style. Milford Zornes we saw. Milford Zornes ' s paintings
we saw down in the library science room [at UCLA] . Is that
where we were?
ZIEGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: I would love to have one of those. That's the
California style.
ZIEGLER: Could you say some about learning to do
watercolor? I think I mentioned to you that it struck me
as a very hard medium to control when I tried it back in
high school art class, and I imagine it's really a tough
skill to learn.
GERRY: I think to do it, you get some big full sheets and
you cut them up into quarters, you might even cut them into
eighths. You do a hundred of them, a hundred watercolors,
and then you'll begin to catch on.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, just see what works through trial and
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error.
GERRY: Yes. And also if you can go to a class where a
watercolor painter is going to do a demonstration, you'll
learn a lot of how to do it. It's really a matter of just--
I mean, I think if you do an oil painting, you can fool
around on one oil painting for ever and ever, but a
watercolor you've got to do fairly fast.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, and if it's not right the first time,
there's not a whole lot you can do to correct it, whereas
with an oil painting you can change it.
GERRY: So I think you want to do, say, a hundred quarter
sheets. I mean eighth sheets, and then maybe a hundred
quarter sheets. And then if you're really ambitious you
can try a half. But a full sheet is a monster painting.
It's a tour de force. Although, most of the well-known
watercolor painters usually do full sheets.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, and not only is it expensive paper if
you're just learning, but even just controlling these runny
colors over that large a surface.
GERRY: The paints are expensive and the brushes are
expensive; it's a very expensive medium. But you can use
student brushes and student watercolors to get started, and
then when you're really good you can buy. That was my
theory. I think the important thing is to spend the money
on the paper. You can get it on sale somewhere. After
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all, if it costs you $1.50 a sheet for Arches watercolor
paper and you cut it four ways, that's not much per sheet,
is it? You cut it eight ways, it's really cheap.
ZIEGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: And you can use student colors and student brushes,
and then when you feel like you're really good, you can buy
a Windsor Newton for $300, a Windsor Newton brush. Or $200
or $100, depending on what size. And Windsor Newton
colors.
ZIEGLER: They're the best.
GERRY: That's what they say. [laughter] I learned
watercolor ing mostly by myself, or looking at other
watercolors. I took it at school, but I don't think I ever
even showed the teacher. Rex Brandt, one of my paintings.
They were so bad.
ZIEGLER: Yeah. Well, it probably is something that you
learn just by trying over and over again. Could you talk
some about artists you admire? Artists or styles or
periods that you admire.
GERRY: Well, I guess in general --
ZIEGLER: I certainly know that in your incarnation as
Bunston Quayles you are familiar with art history.
GERRY: Yeah, well, I do like-- I guess I like the modern
art period. I mean, those are the ones I like. The
cubists and everybody that was influenced by cubism. So
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that is sort of the period that I always fall back on as
far as my interests go. I don't go — I certainly admire
paintings before the twentieth century, but I don't get all
excited about them. I'm mostly a twentieth-century
painter. Or the ones that influenced me. So who is
that? Picasso, Matisse. And then I like the surrealist
[Giorgio de] Chirico. And the Belgian [Rene] Magritte
and-- Oh, [Balthasar] Balthus is another one I like a
lot. Now, as far as the more commercial artists that I
admire-- Edward Bawden of England. I mean, a great
watercolorist, but he also did a lot of work for the Curwen
Press and a lot of more commercial drawings for commercial
advertising that I think were really knockouts. Oh, he did
a lot of drawings for illustration also. And also Eric
Ravilious was my favorite wood engraver, followed by his
student, John O'Connor.
ZIEGLER: Who was his student?
GERRY: John O'Connor. In his early days he was my
favorite wood engraver. David Jones is another one who I
can't help but be impressed by as an illustrator and as a
wood engraver. And then Gus [Gustave] Bofa, a French
artist. Charles Laborde, another French illustrator I'm
much impressed with. And Ardizzone, Edward Ardizzone, the
English illustrator. And McKnight Kauffer, who did Elsie
and the Child, made the drawings from which they made the
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stencils. And then the American illustrators would be
Gilbert Bundy and Carl Erickson. In the kids' book
illustrations, [Feodor] Rojankovsky. And Gus [Gustaf]
Tenggren, who did work at the Disney Studios before my
time. And maybe Floyd Davis, too, I think, as a magazine
illustrator.
And in the fifties, of course, I was terribly
impressed by all the glamorous magazine illustrators. But
I have since lost interest.
ZIEGLER: Who were some of those?
GERRY: Oh, no, I want to mention one other artist who
worked in printing and the book world, Barnett Freedman.
He was another one, a contemporary of Bawden and Ravilious,
who did some really swell drawings for printing. He didn't
do engravings; he always did lithographs. Now, some of the
fifties illustrators that I used to think were the cat's
pajamas, or whatever you want to say, were Joe De Mers and
Coby Whitmore. And to some extent-- I can't remember his
name. He taught at Chouinard; I took a class with him.
He'd been a great illustrator. He was older than most of
them at that time, yet he had changed his style and had not
become passe. That was Pruett Carter. Those were the
glamorous ones. Jon Whitcomb was another glamorous
illustrator that we tried to emulate. And then when
television came along, they all went out of style.
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Magazines were no longer illustrated. People didn't read
stories, I guess. They didn't need them. They went more
into photography. And I think most of those illustrators
that were still alive went into western painting to stay
alive. [laughter] I think that's about all the artists.
People who probably influenced me the most directly
would be Don [Donald W. ] Graham--the teacher at Chouinard —
and William Moore, a Chouinard teacher. And the Chouinard
school itself. I think when I got to Disney, the Disney
artists that influenced me and I felt strongly about were
Bill Peet and Joe Rinaldi. And a man named J. P. [John
Parr] Miller, who I never met, but his drawings were
tremendous. A lot of the Disney artists there. In terms of
entertainment and the making of the pictures, I think Frank
Thomas and certainly "Woolie" [Wolfgang] Reitherman, who I
worked with for many years. He was the director. And Ken
Anderson, who was like an art director, he had tremendous
influence on the things that — To try to teach me, without
telling me exactly, the important things about the
entertainment business and what made things entertaining.
How to get those things on the screen or how to draw them.
ZIEGLER: Could you maybe give some examples of what you
learned from him?
GERRY: Well, Ken-- Frank didn't draw much. He was an
animator, but he often came to work on the story in the
225
early part of a picture. He had a real canny eye for
trying to get something that's entertaining, something the
audience likes. And he, unlike most of the fellows, could
articulate it. He could tell you what he was thinking
about it. In that way he was very helpful, and I was very
lucky to get to work with him as often as I did. But his
drawing was animation drawing, which was not the kind of
drawing that you said, "Oh, gosh, wasn't that beautiful!"
Animation drawing is sort of something else. The drawings
don't exist by themselves; they only exist when you see
them on the screen. By themselves they don't stand up
particularly well. And Woolie would-- Woolie Reitherman
was the director, and he'd been an animator. He was
constantly after me to make things understandable, to make
things so the audience gets it. Not just you, but that the
audience sees what you're trying to tell them. We spent
more time trying to communicate to the audience than we
spent on anything else.
ZIEGLER: And how would you go about doing that? Can you
think of an example?
GERRY: Well, it's like trying to be very obvious. Much
more obvious than you wanted to be, especially if you were
a young man with lots of obscure likes and art films in
your head. You didn't want to be obvious. But eventually
I learned that you've got to be or you lose the audience
226
and they'll never come back.
ZIEGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: So it was more in the staging of ideas, that you
communicated it in an obvious way so the audience did not
miss at all what you were trying to tell them. And Ken
Anderson was a fantastic artist who had the ability in one
drawing to suggest a whole sequence for a picture, by not
only making it a drawing that was appealing, tremendously
appealing, but it would have an idea in it or a piece of
humor in it that would make you want to expand the story.
And that's what he did so well for us, getting the story
started by kind of leading the way with these sort of
"setups," they were called, or "atmosphere drawings" or any
number of words that they call them.
ZIEGLER: Could you give an example, maybe think of an
example from some specific film that people might have
seen?
GERRY: I can't really. I know he did-- Usually on every
picture, he would start out by making these setups of the
characters and then their situations, situations that were
suggested either by an outline or by the book we were
taking it from or by something in Ken ' s head . There might
be fifteen or twenty of them, and then we'd get together
and talk about the story and what was going to happen and
these things that he would suggest ideas for that we could
227
evolve into something.
I will tell you — Ken didn't do this, but another
artist named Mel Shaw — We were working on a picture called
Basil of Baker Street, which later was titled The Great
Mouse Detective. Mel had drawn this picture of Big Ben in
England and it was like a down shot--you were way up in the
sky and looking down on it. But you were close enough to
see that the two mice, Basil and his archenemy, Rattigan,
were having a fight to the end. Much like Sherlock Holmes
had a fight with Moriarty at the falls. Here were these
two mice at the very tip end of one of the hands of Big
Ben. Now, that picture was so powerful and suggested such
an image that you couldn't do anything but keep that in the
movie. It was such a powerful image. And it stayed in the
movie. That was done very early. That is when he was just
exploring possibilities for what could happen. I don't
think it was in the book, it was just something that
occurred to him. This took place in England. The mouse
was like Sherlock Holmes, only he was called Basil, and
wore a little hat like Sherlock Holmes. In fact, he lived
in Sherlock Holmes's flat. In the wall. And that's one
example I can remember of where one drawing suggested a
whole sequence.
ZIEGLER: I was looking at a book about Disney [Disney
Animation: The Illusion of Life, Frank Thomas and 01 lie
228
Johnston] , and it had a sequence of drawings that you did
for The Rescuers, which unfortunately I've never seen. But
it was pointing out how in those drawings, you were trying
to convey the loneliness of the little orphan girl by
showing her with her back to the audience and her shoulders
slumped. And the focus of interest was the cat that was
brushing against her back. Could you maybe use that as an
example and talk about how you would make the drawing so
that it communicates clearly and unambiguously to the
audience?
GERRY: Well, I think in that case, the director wanted to
make sure that everybody would feel sorry for this little
girl. Our heroine. I guess she wasn't a heroine, but she
was the subject of the picture. So we fabricated this
orphanage, what an orphanage looked like, because the
librarian at the studio had found out that there were no
more orphanages, orphanages no longer existed. There were
only foster homes. Well, but the director said, "Phoo,
phoo. I don't care. I want an orphanage." So we did the
orphanage.
So then we thought, well, maybe there would be this
long row of beds. And I drew the long row of beds. And
way down at the end-- All the other kids had gone, and
there was little Penny sitting way down at the end, kind of
silhouetted in the window on her little bed. And I drew
229
army beds that I remembered so well. Plain pipe beds. It
was a pretty bare place. And then I think the animator- -
They were talking about what would the girl do. And I
think we had some dialogue written in. It was a problem of
what was the animator going to do with this girl to not
only put over the dialogue but to make the audience feel
really sorry for her and want her to be adopted and not
want her to be kidnapped by the cruel lady and all that.
So that's when I started drawing all-- "Well, what can the
cat do? What does the girl do?" And you just keep asking
these questions.
230
TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
MAY 18, 1989
ZIEGLER: Sorry I had to interrupt you. You were
describing what you could have the girl do and what you
could have the cat do to show the pathos of the situation.
GERRY: So I, as a story artist, was looking for material
to give the animator some suggestions as to what he would
do with the little girl. So we'd have meetings and talk
about it, and I began to make these drawings of-- What
would I do with the cat? What would the cat do? How would
the girl treat the cat? Would the cat go behind her?
Would he sneak up on her? Would he jump into her lap?
Would he sit on the chair? We just tried everything that
would come to mind. And then I had a drawing that I
thought was terribly amusing about when she decided she was
going to go have lunch, she took the cat with her. But she
carried it like a little kid. Sort of with it hanging
down, dragging on the floor. So I think maybe-- Ollie
Johnston, one of the authors of that book, was the
animator. And so I think that when they wrote the book, he
remembered that. Also, he remembered it because it wasn't
so long ago. It would only have been a couple of years
when he wrote the book. So that is probably one of the
reasons he-- Also, maybe he felt that there was really
something there that helped him in his animation. And
231
maybe the sketches were available — they hadn't been lost or
thrown away or burled in the archives or something.
ZIEGLER: I gathered from that book that they usually do
that at Disney, that they have the story sketched out and
then discuss these sketches and get ideas for how you can
animate them, what sort of action, from looking at the
series of sketches.
GERRY: A lot of exploration. Lots and lots of
exploration. "What are the possibilities of the
situation?" You try to explore them visually. That is the
story of the animation-story game. The exploration of the
possibilities .
ZIEGLER: Yeah.
GERRY: And that's one advantage that the Disney Studio is
able to do, to take advantage of doing that. Many more
studios cannot afford to do that. I mean, they just have
to make it right the first time. Bang, that's it. You
never look back, you just keep going. And even the
animators never look at their work. Or care about it. Oh,
I won't say they don't care about it — they never look back
and say, "Was this a good scene, or was that a bad
scene?" They just keep going straight ahead. So we can
have the luxury, if you want to call it, of the agony of
exploration .
ZIEGLER: Is that just because Disney can better afford the
232
time to be spent than the other studios?
GERRY: Yeah, and that was the tradition. I mean, that was
what Walt Disney always did himself--or got people to do--
"Find out what we can do with this."
ZIEGLER: What have you mainly done at Disney? Have you
been an animator mostly? Have you been a story man doing
stories?
GERRY: I started out, as everybody did in those days, as
an apprentice in-betweener . That was the job. I mean, the
lowest job in animation. You put the drawings in between
other drawings.
ZIEGLER: So you'll have one person do an action at one
point and then an action at another point several seconds
later. And then someone has to draw all the intermediate
stages?
GERRY: It would be more like a fraction of a second later.
ZIEGLER: Ah.
GERRY: The animator and his assistant generally get the
thing all animated, and then they decide where they want to
put the in-betweens which will smooth out the action. And
an in-between requires no effort or talent. I mean, of
course, it requires a great deal of effort. It's one of
the very difficult things to have to do. But it doesn't
require much creativity. You've just got to get that
drawing right in the middle so the animator likes it and
233
says, "Yes, that's in the middle." It's a good way to
begin to learn all about animation, because you're working
with an animator, you're working with exposure sheets,
you're working with the drawings, and you are a part of
this team. I mean, you're working with the animator and
his assistant, and there might even be a fourth person
involved.
ZIEGLER: How do you go about learning what the action in
the middle would be? Like, say, just me as a lay person,
if I move my hand, I am not really aware of where it is
between the time it ' s here and the time I finish my
movement .
GERRY: You've got a light board. So the light's coming
up, and you have the two drawings, one on top of the
other. You can see both drawings. And on top of that you
have a drawing paper. They are all on pegs so they won't
move. They're keyed to each other. Then you begin to
draw--over the two drawings — the one that's in between.
Now, you don't just draw it, you kind of flip these
papers. These three drawings, you flip them--it is called
"flipping." You flip the papers in such a way that you can
actually see it move. And that is the real test. I mean,
you can say, "Well, I drew it in the middle." But if it
doesn't flip, in other words if it doesn't move smoothly —
ZIEGLER: If it does a funny jump in the middle?
234
says, "Yes, that's in the middle." It's a good way to
begin to learn all about animation, because you're working
with an animator, you're working with exposure sheets,
you're working with the drawings, and you are a part of
this team. I mean, you're working with the animator and
his assistant, and there might even be a fourth person
involved.
ZIEGLER: How do you go about learning what the action in
the middle would be? Like, say, just me as a lay person,
if I move my hand, I am not really aware of where it is
between the time it ' s here and the time I finish my
movement .
GERRY: You've got a light board. So the light's coming
up, and you have the two drawings, one on top of the
other. You can see both drawings. And on top of that you
have a drawing paper. They are all on pegs so they won't
move. They're keyed to each other. Then you begin to
draw--over the two drawings--the one that's in between.
Now, you don't just draw it, you kind of flip these
papers. These three drawings, you flip them- -it is called
"flipping." You flip the papers in such a way that you can
actually see it move. And that is the real test. I mean,
you can say, "Well, I drew it in the middle." But if it
doesn't flip, in other words if it doesn't move smoothly —
ZIEGLER: If it does a funny jump in the middle?
234
GERRY: Exactly. If it does a funny jump, you're doing it
wrong. So that's how. I did that for a while. But soon,
like I say, because there was a demand for people because
of the new television-- Because Walt had gone into
television. So I was taken out and put into a layout
department where you plan the scenes, you plan the
backgrounds, and you plan where the animation is going to
take place. You provide the animator with this plan via
the director. I worked in that most of the time. And the
director, whenever he would get a storyboard, would have to
plan how he was going to make that and put that on the
film. So he always called his layout man. "Come in here
and let ' s talk about how we ' re going to put this on
film." And so then the layout man tends to redraw the
storyboards to the director's specifications. So from that
it led to situations where the director was asked to
produce a story- -he would say, "Hey, layout man, come in
here and start making these sketches." So I gradually got
so I was doing nothing but sketching. I kept wanting to go
back to layout, and I kept saying, "When am I going back to
layout?" "No, you're too valuable doing this." So I never
did get to go back. I stayed on doing story work most of
the rest of my career. For about twenty years. Twenty-
five years.
ZIEGLER: The story that we were talking about, where you
235
do the still drawings of the sequence of action and people
discussed them to get some of the ideas?
GERRY: Yeah. Sort of a suggestion of what can happen.
But not necessarily a cinematic scheme that their director
is going to follow. It is really mostly to show the story
and the possibilities of the situations and the
characters. The director, he is the one who is going to
make it. He is going to put it on film, and he is going to
decide where the close-ups are and the long shots and the
pans and the length of the scene and so on. That's not
really the story man's province.
ZIEGLER: How is the work of the story man similar to
illustrating books? Do you feel like you've learned
something from doing story work that has helped you in
illustrating books? Or vice versa?
GERRY: Oh, sure. I think in making things clear and
understandable and in remembering that you're making the
picture for an audience, not just for yourself. And the
most successful illustrators are ones who appeal to the
audience and make the audience like them, make them like
the drawing or the illustration.
ZIEGLER: And maybe picking out what part of the story is
the best to illustrate?
GERRY: Yeah, I think that, too. But I would say making a
motion picture is very much like making a book. There are
236
all these elements that have to go together, and in the
movies it's done by many, many different people. You can
make a movie by yourself and you can make a book by
yourself. But there are all these decisions. There are
all these problems that have to be faced that evolve in
much the same way, from one state to the next to the next
to the next. A lot of times, for one reason or another, I
had to work on a book for a longer period of time than I
anticipated. And generally, the book would have improved
from my original idea. Given the extra time, something
would occur to me to do that hadn't before. If I had just
rushed right through it —
ZIEGLER: What films have you worked on from the Disney
Studios?
GERRY: When I started, they were doing Sleeping Beauty.
And I can't remember-- We went from Sleeping Beauty to 101
Dalmatians. And I was still in layout on that, although I
did do some story work. From 101 Dalmatians we went to The
Sword in the Stone. I didn ' t do any story work on that .
Then we went to The Aristocats. No, no. Then we went to
Jungle Book. I started to do a lot more story work. I did
some art direction on that, too, though not too
successfully. But by the end of that picture, I was doing
almost exclusively story work. Then we went from Jungle
Book to The Sword in the Stone. No, I'm sorry, I'm
237
sorry. I should remember this, shouldn't I? We went from
Jungle Book to Aristocats. Right. Aristocats.
ZIEGLER: Well, anyhow, the sequence doesn't matter if you
don't remember it. We can even look that up somewhere.
GERRY: Okay. So we worked on Aristocats. Walt Disney had
died during Jungle Book. We worked on Aristocats. I went
to work for another man named Winston Hibler, who was
supervising the story of The Aristocats. I worked for him
for quite a while. But then as the material began to
filter back down to the director, I went back with the
director to help him develop the boards for filming. This
was the same director, Wolfgang Reitherman.
ZIEGLER: Also knows as "Woolie" that we mentioned earlier.
GERRY: Right. Right. He was a very strong director.
Relentless in searching out the better way to do
something. See, that was Aristocats. Then we went to The
Rescuers, I think. Worked on Rescuers — No, worked on
Robin Hood. Then we went to Rescuers . And from Rescuers
we went to The Fox and the Hound, which I only worked on
very briefly. I did go back to layout on The Rescuers. At
the last part of it I went to work on that and did some
layout for a director named Art Stevens. I left the studio
to start my own printshop in 1977. That was right at the
end of The Rescuers, the beginning of The Fox and the
Hound. Then I came back to work on The Black Cauldron for
238
Ron Miller, the producer. I was about the fiftieth person
who had ever worked on it. But I did my version, which I
thought was pretty good. Then I left the studio and came
back again to work on Basil, the mouse detective who I told
you was on the clock tower of Big Ben. Then I worked on a
picture called Oliver, which was a recent success. Now I'm
working on some stories that they're going to use in their
plant [Disney-MGM Studio Tour at Disney World] down in
Florida. Some Mickey Mouse stories to bring back the old
characters. Mickey, Donald, and Goofy. And I'll probably
work on one more feature, I hope, before finally
retiring.
ZIEGLER: I saw that Disney version of Winnie- the-Pooh, and
I saw your name in the credits on that. I wonder if you
could talk some about what it is like when there's a
classic illustrator, like the Ernest Shepherd illustrations
for the A. A. Milne books, and then you have to animate
that. Are there any problems? Or maybe any particular
challenges working around these illustrations that everyone
associates with the story?
GERRY: We had a very difficult time with that story. And
when I look back, I wonder why. But it was. I think it
was because nothing happened. It wasn't a real cartoon
story. There was no violent cartoon action that we could
depend on for laughs or-- It was very whimsical. And we
239
were not suited--
ZIEGLER: Yeah, and so much of the humor--that ' s one of my
favorite books — is so verbal, I think.
GERRY: Right. I always think of it as literature and not
cartoons. But Walt decided he wanted to make it. So we
struggled with the story. But meanwhile, they were talking
about the artwork, and a woman named Sylvia Romer got a
book. She bought a Winnie- the-Pooh book at the bookstore
and she colored the drawings that were in the book. And
the director was so impressed with these drawings that he
decided that was the style we were going to use and
everybody should draw like Shepherd. [laughter] So there
was an attempt to get some of that Shepherdesque texture in
drawing in there. It certainly was a long way from
Shepherd, but the attempt was there. That was the style,
and it all came because Sylvia had done a job of tinting
these drawings that were in the book. The director was
just sold on that idea.
So at least we had the style, but we still didn't have
the story, because we were not whimsical people. But
eventually, it seems to me, we went back more and more to
the book, rather than trying to invent cartoon funny
business for these characters . We went back to the book
more frequently until finally-- I can't believe how much of
a struggle it was to get that first one done, Winnie-the-
240
Pooh and the Honey Tree. And it was very successful. But
it didn't have any of the things in it that we could do
best. You know? That was why it was such a struggle. But
we went back and actually used the dialogue right out of
the book and actually played it in more of a whimsical sort
of tongue-in-cheek way. And, of course, the Sherman
brothers [Bob and Dick Sherman], their songs did an awful
lot, too, to make that picture come off. When it was
finally animated, it seemed very much like the book to
me. But we had gone a very circuitous route to get
there. Then we did it and it was popular. It became a
fairly big success. And it was tied in with some
merchandising that made it affordable to do it, because we
couldn't afford to do anything but a feature then.
Anything less than a feature we couldn't afford to do.
So then we did a third one, and the idea was
eventually to-- I mean, we did a second one and we were
going to do a third one, and then they could put it
together in a theatrical release and recoup all losses, and
maybe make some money, I don't know. So I worked on the
second one. The second one was Winnie-the-Pooh and the
Blustery Day. And for that one, we employed some of the
top animators. The first one was made with-- I don't want
to say second-stringers, but we were all pretty much
second-stringers on that first Winnie-the-Pooh . And then
241
the second one, we got some of the top animators. Milt
Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and some others. Then
on the third one, I don't think I was-- I wasn't involved
with the third one at all, so I can't tell you how that was
finally done. So that was my Winnie-the-Pooh experience.
ZIEGLER: Ernest Shepherd's drawings are sort of sketchy,
and apparently animation has hard outlines. And I think
even though I could see you were taking the shapes of
Winnie-the-Pooh and Eeyore and the other characters from
the book, the picture still looked very different in the
end.
GERRY: Yeah, well, that just happens as the nature of
animation.
ZIEGLER: Yeah, that is inevitable in the medium.
GERRY: His pictures were, of course, still pictures.
ZIEGLER: Yeah. It's bound to be different.
GERRY: Once you start to move them, then there are lots of
problems that are not in a still picture. And, of course,
the animators have to have a certain way to draw that ' s
comfortable for them that they can get the character in,
you know, every conceivable position. Where Shepherd
wasn't faced with that problem. So they might have to draw
some of them a little different. Well, by using the xerox
process, you see, we could sort of hint at the Shepherd
style, in the background at least.
242
ZIEGLER: Okay. Well, now, I have just sort of a whole
grab bag of things, of questions that were raised by
previous interviews that I just want to clear up.
GERRY: Okay. God, this has been a lot of work for you!
ZIEGLER: Things like just verifying names and things like
that.
GERRY: Oh, okay.
ZIEGLER: But one maybe more substantial question. How did
you come up with the pseudonym Bunston Quayles?
GERRY: Oh, I-- Bunny Quayles. A frightened little rabbit
hiding in the bushes would be a bunny quailing under the
bushes. Because I was a coward to write it in my own
name. [laughter] And I had met a guy named Dunston, and
they all called him "Dunny." Maybe that was where I got
it. And me being a chicken, a coward, not to write it
under my own name.
ZEIGLER: Well, can you think of any topics we haven't
covered or anything else that you'd like to say here?
GERRY: Well, I think if you-- The Disney story and the
story of me as a printer overlap. But the Disney story
would be another book in itself, really. If the library
was interested, there are other people who are still alive
who know a lot more than I do. But it's another whole
story. We haven't really touched on it, just a little bit
here.
243
ZIEGLER: Well, would you like to say some more about it?
GERRY: No. I don't think so.
ZIEGLER: Well, maybe the Disney archive will interview you
about that some day.
GERRY: Right. That's right. I'm sure Dave [David R.
Smith] 's gotten a lot of those people--you know, that are
still around who were there at the beginning--to talk.
ZIEGLER: Well, I'd just like to say I have really enjoyed
this. I really had a lot of fun looking at your printing
at the Clark [Library] and I really enjoyed talking to you.
GERRY: I surely saved every paper, didn't I? Every scrap
of paper. Yeah, I did that for my own amusement really,
because I thought, "Well, someday I'll just go through
these things and look at each piece of paper for
remembering. And then I will throw it away." But then I
thought maybe Ed [Edwin H. Carpenter] could-- "It may be of
some benefit to Ed if he would like to have it." And then
he gave it to the Clark. I didn't have any idea they would
have ever wanted it.
ZIEGLER: Well, of course we want it! And it's too late to
throw it away now. [laughter] We're guarding it carefully
down at the Clark. But we would love to have you come down
to the Clark and look at it whenever you feel like it.
GERRY: Well, I hope they were able to get some similar
material from Grant Dahlstrom's Castle Press. I will have
244
to ask John [Bidwell] sometime.
ZIEGLER: I haven't checked into what we have in the way of
archival material on the Castle Press. We have a large
collection of the books printed, and we have a lot about
Grant Dahlstrom.
GERRY: Well, I meant specifically job envelopes or
something that--
ZIEGLER: Yeah, I don't know. I haven't checked into
that. But we do try to collect that sort of thing when we
can get it down at the Clark. Because, of course, that
really tells the whole story. I mean, it's great to see
the stages of the job, and not just the finished product.
GERRY: Yeah. Brings back a lot of memories.
245
INDEX
A-1 Bookbinders, 150
Abbey of San Encino Press,
13, 18-19, 177, 191
Adjarian, Max, 161
Adler, Elmer, 131
Alguire, Danny, 70
Alice In Wonderland, 24
Alliance for Contemporary
Book Arts, 191-92
American Typefounders
Fellowship, 201
Ampersand Press, 64-65
Anderson, Gregg, 165, 172-
73
Anderson, Ken, 219, 225,
227
Apostol, Jane, 36, 40, 58
Appet, Louis, 27, 95, 206
Archer, H. Richard, 77
Ardizzone, Edward, 67, 86-
87, 139, 144, 210-11, 223
Arellanes, Audrey, 83-84
Arion Press, 172, 195
Aristocats, The, 238
Armitage, Merle, 173-74
Bailey, Betty, 59
Bailey, Dan, 59, 108
Bailey, Paul, 176
Baker, Marion A., 107-8
Ballish, Ray, 35
Balthus, Balthasar, 223
Barnhart, Dale, 70-71, 80,
146
Bawden, Edward, 144, 223
Bennett, Arnold, 214
Bevis, Laura Dorothy, 181-
82
Bewick, Thomas, 217
Bidwell, John, 88, 188-89
Bielenson, Peter, 131-32,
156
Black Cauldron, The, 238-39
Blair, Preston, 219
Blau, Bela, 42, 71, 148-51
Bliss, Carey S., 54, 63
Bofa, Gustave, 223
Bohne, Pall W. , 39-40, 60,
62, 118, 184, 206
Book Arts Print Shop, 191
Book Collectors Society,
191
Bookman Press, 99
Bookplate Collectors
Society, 83-84
Bradford, William, 70
Bradley, Will, 58-59
Bragdon, Miriam, 103-4
Brandt, Rex, 144, 219, 222
Brett, Dorothy, 99
Brown, Grace Marion, 174
Brown, Helen Carter, 65
Browne, Clyde, 13, 16, 17,
18-19, 177
Bullard, Carolyn, 184-85
Bundy, Gilbert, 224
Burns, Robert, 95
Business Printers, 160
Butler, William H., 89
Cactus and Succulent
Journal, 13, 15-16
Califia Bookstore, 198
Carpenter, Edwin H., 19,
93, 115, 186-87, 244
Carter, Pruett, 224
Caslon, William, 125
Cassidy, Barry, 198
Castle Press, 7-10, 12-18,
20, 47-48, 74, 102, 144,
175, 176, 191, 244-45
Cheever, John, 42, 47, 93
Cheney, William, 54, 91-92
China Boy, 161
Chirico, Giorgio de, 223
Chouinard, Nelbert Murphy, 3
Chouinard Art Institute, 3-
4, 21
Christian, Peggy, 75-76
Clark, William Andrews,
Jr., 186
Clark Library (UCLA), 152,
185-86, 188-89, 197, 244-
45
246
Class, John, 198
Clemmons, Larry, 153-54
Clyde Browne and the Abbey
San Enclno, 18
Coats, Claude, 219
Cooper, Oswald, 131
Corrigan, A.J., 58
Curwen Press, 112-14, 131,
132, 156, 157, 211, 214,
215, 223
Dahlstrom, Grant, 7-17, 20,
21-22, 23-24, 33, 48, 59,
63-65, 74-75, 76, 127,
130, 131, 157-58, 161,
163, 165, 168, 173-76,
191, 193, 244-45
Dahlstrom, Helen Slater, 65
Dailey, William, 117, 179-
80
Dailey, William and
Victoria, Rare Books and
Fine Prints, 117, 179
D'Ambrosio, Joseph, 192,
194-95
Davidovich, Vasily, 70
Davies, David W., 13, 17,
18, 56, 102-3, 178
Davis, Floyd, 224
Davis, Sam, 58
Dawson, Glen, 54, 61, 75,
76, 103, 177, 200
Dawson, Muir, 75, 76, 177,
200
Dawson's Book Shop, 12, 53,
54, 56, 61, 62, 64, 75,
106, 112, 177-78, 182,
198
De Mers, Joe, 224
Devine, J. P., 67
Dibden, Thomas Frognall,
116
Dike, Phil, 219
Disney, Walt, 233, 235, 238
Dreyfus, John, 183
Duensing, Paul H., 201-2
Dwiggins, William A. , 156,
203
Earl Gray Bindery, 55
Elsie and the Child, 211,
214, 223
Erickson, Carl, 224
Evans, Henry, 86
Fay, Eliot, 99
Fay, Margaret, 99
Fine Arts Press, 177
Fisher, M.F.K., 40, 57-58,
211
Fitzgerald, Scott, 90
Ford, Ford Madox, 69, 96
Fox and the Hound, The, 238
Francis, Bruce, 42
Freedman, Barnett, 224
Freeman, Nate, 30
Gayne Brothers and Lane,
209
Gerry, Clella White
( mother ) , 6
Gerry, Francis B. (father),
2, 56
Gerry, Mary Palmer (wife),
24, 30, 31, 33, 66, 205-6
Golden Cockerel Press, 131,
144
Goudy, Frederic, 127, 131
Graham, Donald W., 3-6, 22-
23, 225
Great Mouse Detective, The,
228
Green, Ralph, 107
Greene, Graham, 46
Grey, Earl, 148
Hancock, Warren, 97
Harmsen, Tyrus, 77, 190-91
Hart, James D., 160
Haselton, Scott E., 9, 12-
16, 33, 37, 175
Hibler, Winston, 238
Hitchcock, David, 97-98,
108, 152
Hoernle, John, 20
Hoffman, Richard, 178
Hogarth Press, 47
Hopkins, Richard, 201
Horn, Andrew, 191
Houle, George J., 180
247
Housman, A.E., 73
Hoyem, Andrew, 195, 202
Hulett, Ralph, 219
Huntington Library (San
Marino, California), 186
International Alliance of
Graphic Artists (lAGA),
165
Johnston, Ollie, 231, 242
Jones, David, 223
Jones, Louise Seymour, 55-
56
Jungle Book, The, 237-38
Kahl, Milt, 242
Karmiole, Kenneth, 180
Kater Craft, 151-52
Kauffer, McKnight, 223
Kavin, Mel, 151-52
Kennedy, Richard, 47
King, Susan, 41, 192
Kinney, George, 144, 176
Kosa, Emil, 219
Kroll, Tony, 97, 98
Kronfeld, Marion, 65-66
Laborde, Charles, 223
Landacre, Paul, 163, 184
Laurel Hill Press, 79
Lawrence, D.H., 99
Lawrence, Frieda, 99
Leggett, Edwina, 198
LeGuin, Ursula K. , 44
Liebowitz, Morris, 31
Lincoln, Harry, 26
Lindner, Ernest A., 53, 55,
60, 68
Loomis, Andrew, 21
Lord John Press, 41-42, 45,
61, 89, 93, 94, 113
Lorson, James E., 89, 93,
116, 179, 200, 218
Lorson, Joan, 89, 116
Lorson 's Books and Prints,
89-90, 116, 198
Lucky, Rochelle, 46-47, 55
Luhan, Mabel Dodge, 99
Lustig, Alvin, 173
Lutes, Dela, 69, 96
Mackensie and Harris,
Typesetters, 195, 202
Magritte, Rene, 223
Marks, Lillian, 66, 118,
148, 159, 191
Marks, Saul, 74, 130, 131,
157-59, 161, 163, 191,
193
Marshall, Elva, 69, 97, 98,
176, 192
Matisse, Henri, 223
Matrix (magazine), 147-48,
215
McCallister, Bruce, 174-75
Meynell, Francis, 131, 132,
156
Mid-West Matrix, 124
Miller, John Parr, 225
Miller, Ron, 239
Moore, Clement C. , 78
Moore, William, 4, 225
Morison, Stanley, 127, 156,
158
Murphy, Gerald, 32
Nash, John Henry, 186
New Ampersand Press, 64-65
Nicoll- Johnson, Mark, 65
Nonesuch Press, 131, 132,
156, 157
Norman, Bonnie Thompson, 192
O'Connor, John, 223
Oliver, 239
Olson, House, 16-18, 102,
175
101 Dalmatians, 237
Orphanos, Stathis, 45-46,
119-20, 142
Owen, Wilfred, 70-71, 146
Palmer, Russell (brother-
in-law), 24
Peach Pit Press, 31
Peet, Bill, 225
Percival, Olive, 36
Peter Pauper Press, 132,
156
248
Picasso, Pablo, 223
Plranesi, Giambattista,
184-85
Plantin Press, 65-66, 190
Plantln Press of Saul and
Lillian Marks, The, 190-
91
Platen Jobber, The, 106-7
Poe, Edgar Allan, 61
Powell, Lawrence Clark,
163, 176, 189-90, 215
Primavera Press, 55, 160-61
Purdy, James, 42, 94
Handle, John, 147, 215-16
Ravilious, Eric, 144, 223
Reagh, Patrick, 12, 34-35,
44, 45-46, 61, 68, 71,
77, 79, 88, 90, 117-21,
135, 142, 143, 161, 171,
178, 179, 180, 183, 189,
192, 194
Reitherman, Wolfgang
"Woolie," 225, 226, 238
Rescuers, The, 229-31, 238
Ricci, Vera, 11, 62-63, 65
Richardson, Charles Leland,
86, 100, 115
Riley, Art, 219
Rinaldi, Joe, 225
Ritchie, Ward, 33, 39, 55,
56, 63, 77, 130, 131,
139, 157-58, 159-61, 163,
178, 190, 191, 193
Rizzo, Anthony, 26-27, 95
Robin Hood, 238
Rogers, Bruce, 156, 203
Rojankovsky, Feodor, 224
Romer, Sylvia, 240
Rounce and Coffin Club, 19,
67, 68, 77, 79, 84, 159,
163, 165-66, 190, 192
Routledge, Edmund, 62
Roxburghe Club, 67, 189
Ruzicka, Rudolf, 123
Ryland, Teri, 76-77
Ryman, Herb, 219
San Pasqual Press, 56, 114-
15, 181
Saunders Studio Press, 177
Scott E. Haselton and His
Abbey Garden Press, 12-13
Self -Realization
Fellowship, 209
Sharp, William, 73
Shaw, Mel, 228
Sheets, Millard, 220
Sherman, Bob, 241
Sherman, Dick, 241
Simon, Oliver, 156
Sleeping Beauty, 237
Sloan, Helen, 13-14, 15, 29
Smith, Sydney, 69
Snow White, 5
Sperry, Baxter, 79-80
Spicer, Dorothy, 81
Stanchfield, Walter, 60-61,
73-74, 105-6
Stauffacher, Jack W. , 172
Steiger, Gary, 182
Stevens, Art, 238
Stewart, Gloria, 192
Stickful of Nonpareil, A^, 87
Sword in the Stone, The, 237
Sylvester, Ralph, 45-46,
119-20, 142
Taber, Gladys, 66
Tanner, Wesley, 172
Tenggren, Gustaf, 224
Thomas, Diana, 137
Thomas, Frank, 225-26, 242
Thomas, Roscoe, 16, 17, 18,
175
Thompson, Michael, 182
Tiger Press, 191
Trefz, Steve, 115
Trefz, Val, 114-15
Trefz Press, 115
Twain, Mark, 68
Updike, John, 45
Voss, Eric, 194
Walt Disney Studio, 5, 23-
24, 140-41, 153-54, 218-
19, 225-42
Walton, Izaak, 72
249
Weather Bird ( newsletter ) ,
112-14, 196
Weather Bird Press, 30-39,
153-54; binding and, 145-
52, 206-9; newsletter of,
112-14; paper used at,
133-35; sales, 195-201;
typefaces of, 122-29
Weber, Jeff, 180-82
Western Books Exhibition,
74, 78, 159, 163-70, 192-
93
Western Lore Press, 176
Whitcomb, Jon, 224
White, Lula Baxter
(grandmother), 209-10
White, T.H., 117
Whitmore, Coby, 224
Williams, Roy, 62
Williams, Tennessee, 142
Williams, Thomas, 177
Wilson, Adrian, 172
Wilson, Alfred W., 61
Winnie-the-Pooh and the
Blustery Day, 241-42
Winnie-the-Pooh and the
Honey Tree, 239-42
Yellin, Herb, 41-45, 57,
94, 113, 119
Zamorano Club, 63, 67, 189,
191
Zeitlin, Jake, 55-56, 63,
64-65, 67-68, 76, 160-62,
163, 174, 178, 180-85
Zornes, Milford, 144, 220
250
INDEX OF BOOKS DESIGNED AND/OR PRINTED BY
VANCE GERRY
Bahloul and Hamdouna
Bibliography of Cheney Miniatures
"Bibliophile's Map to Los Angeles, A"
Black Cat, The
Book of Poems, A; Cruachan
Borscht: Being a Russian Recipe
Boy ' s Book of Fireworks
Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast,
The (not yet published)
Castle & Peacocks
Chile; Being a Texas Recipe
Christmas at Forest Sauvage
Christmas at Manor Farm
Complete Angler, The
Day the Pig Fell in the Well, The
Designs Cut for Plant in Press Calendars, 65-66
1941 to 1946
Dibden's Ghost 116
Distributing Type or the Just Art of 67
Throwing In
Ernest A. Lindner Collection of Antique 54-55, 159
Printing Machinery, The
Everyday Gourmet, The 59
First Thanksgiving, The
50-
51
54
88,
188
61
79
69
62
115
-16
147
69,
70
117
78
72-
73
42,
47,
93-
94
70
251
Flowers on a Table; A Study of an 54
Imprudent Wood Engraving
Four Common Plants; Linoleum Cuts and 84-85
the Text Describing Oleander, Plumbago,
Wild Cucumber, and Yarrow
Four Weeds 85-86,
100-101
Gatsby, No Show Dog, Found a Home in 67-68
Hollywood Anyway
Gentleman's Cooking Book (not yet published) 110-11
Glimpse of the Past from the Minutes of 77
the Rounce and Coffin Club, A
Grant Dahlstrom at Seventy- five; More Tributes 64
Grant Dahlstrom, Master Printer; A Tribute on 63-65
His Seventy-fifth Birthday
Helen Slater Dahlstrom, 1905-1985; Memorial 65
Addresses Given August 30, 1985
Hour of the Rose, The 73
House Olson, Printer
I Remember Robinson Jeffers
John Gerry and His Descendants
Last Time I Dined with the King, The
Letter from Mark Twain concerning the Paige
Compositor, A
Letters concerning D. H. Lawrence
Letters of Saint Jerome
Marvelous Platen Jobber of George
Phineas Gordon, The
Mary Elizabeth
Miniatures on Modern Artists; Some Notes
252
17,
102-3,
178
63
56-
57
80-
81
68
99-
100
161
106
-7
78
52,
147
69, 96-
■98
27-28
89, 90
86-87
43-44,
61,
89
53-54
69, 96
76-n
42-43,
94-
95
Mission Grapes
Night before Christmas, The
Nothing To Wear
On the Illustrating of Books
Out of the West; Poems by William Everson,
Gary Snyder, Philip Levlne, Clayton Eshleman,
and Jerome Rothenberg
Picture Book of Chickens, A
Plum Pudding
Poems
Proud Flesh
Restful Reading for Young and Old, Designed 67
to Banish Care and Alleviate Cynicism,
Decorously Illustrated with Cuts
Sandwiches and Coffee 96
San Pasgual Press, The: A Dream Nearly 39, 46,
Realized 114-15
Seaside Plants of Southern California 85-86,
(not yet published) 115, 210-
11
Selected War Poems of Wilfred Owen 70-71, 146
Sharp Criticism of Nineteenth Century Letter- 58
Forms, A
Some English Christmas Customs 81-82
Some Epigrammatical Notes 26-27, 95
Some Fond Remembrances of a Boy Printer 40, 74-76
at the Castle Press
Special Recipes for Special People 11, 62-63
Spring Barley: Poems of the Santa Ynez 106, 147
Valley
253
standing and the Waiting, The 40-41, 57-
58, 211,
214, 215
Stillmeadow Christmas 66
Summer Impressions and Other Poems 105
3X3; Nine Poems from Los Angeles 65
Through the Garden Gate 103-4
To a Mouse 95-96
Topography of the Castle Press, circa 1943, 47-49, 88
and Other Dim Recollections
Torrey Pine Reserve 44
Trans-Pacific 189
Treatise on the Art and Antiquity of Cookery 46-47, 55,
in the Middle Ages, A 148-49
Tussie Mussie, A 55-56
Type 67
Typographical Howitzer, The 58
Under Three Inches 61-62
Unique 1824 Columbian Press, A 60
Vaporisms 62
Vegetable Soup 69, 96
Visit from Saint Nicholas, A 78
Walt Stanchfield: A Series of Wood Cuts 105
Will Bradley 40, 58-59
With Rue My Heart is Laden 73
Zinfandel Grapes 69, 98
254
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